straw or hay bale gardening

[Tumbling K]

this is what I'm talking about doing, for my vegetable garden.....

 

[hillbillyreefer]

I'd go with the wet ones. The first thing you are going to do is wet them and leave them for a week or two anyway. $2 is $2.

 

[lazy gardener]

I'd go with the wet ones. The first thing you are going to do is wet them and leave them for a week or two anyway. $2 is $2.

Absolutely. The cheaper bales have a head start, and therefore are more valuable to you... AS LONG AS they aren't so wet that they're too heavy to easily work with, or the twine is rotting, and they will fall apart before you get them in position.

 

[Stacykins]

The already wet bales can't be used as livestock food due to the mold. Might as well not waste the ones animals can still eat, the dry ones. Plus, cheaper! Though wet bales can be so heavy. I suspect they probably got wet and dried out, but are still no good after getting wet.

 

[lazy gardener]

After getting wet, they will not be acceptable for animal food. But they will be perfect for the use we are discussing here: hay or straw bale gardening.

 

[User395221]

The straw I used to get was from the paddock. It was never mouldy. If you lived in the tropics you might get mould, if you're in a dry climate, possibly (probably) not. As said, you can't give it to horses but you can still use it for heaps of things. There's nothing obviously "wrong" with it, they just haven't moved it into storage from the fields (hence the cheaper price)

EDIT (only the ones on top and outside get a bit wet, the ones underneath don't. They still won't sell them for feed, but chances are that some of the cheap ones you get will not have actually been rained on directly)

 

[Tumbling K]

one of the benefits to using hay, vs straw, is that you don't have to wet down for two weeks, and supply the fertilizer. at least my understanding form on line reading.

you can separate the hay some, dump in some compost put the seed, add more compost and start growing.

 

[Ridgerunner]

One advantage for preparing the haybale or strawbale by wetting it for a few weeks or even months it starts to rot (compost) on the inside so there are nutrients ready for the roots to absorb. It will get hot and cook a lot of the seeds inside but cool off by the time you plant. I would not want that bale at cooking temperature when I was transplanting something into it. Plus a lot of the seeds near the outside will sprout before you plant. Hay, by definition, will have a lot of seeds in it but straw can still contain a fair amount of viable seeds. How well they sprout will depend on your outside temperatures.

 

[lazy gardener]

If I were to hay or straw bale garden, I'd take the 2 weeks to condition that bale with high nitrogen fertilizer. The process is recommended to kill weed seeds, and to get the nitrogen cycle in place so the bale will feed the bacteria which will feed the plants. If you plant without conditioning, you run the risk of the nitrogen cycle getting going after the roots are deep in the bale. This will cook your plants from the roots up.

 

[farmchick897]

I have heard you can use urine for adding nitrogen. Does anyone know if this is true?