Add productive garden space and raise your planting bed with a straw bale garden. You can use this technique to create a raised bed garden on the patio, on the lawn or on poorly compacted soil. Straw bale gardens have been around for centuries, but thanks to Joel Karsten’s book Straw Bale Gardens, it has grown in popularity.
All you need is a few bales of straw, fertilizer, some compost, and time to maintain, plant, and water your garden.
Buy bales of straw made from alfalfa, wheat, oats, rye, or other grains that contain fewer weed seeds than hay. Start a few weeks before you want to start planting.
Place the bales in place with the cut sides facing up and lace them parallel to the ground. When you start the state process they become very heavy and difficult to move. Once the pads are in place, you can begin the conditioning process. This is done to start the inside of the straw bale composting so that they aid in plant growth.
The first day spread fertilizer over the top of the ball. Use half a cup of a whole garden fertilizer or three cups of an organic fertilizer like milorganite. The organic fertilizers feed the microorganisms that help break down the straw into a nutrient-rich planting medium. Now moisten the pad thoroughly with water.
Continue to soak the pad thoroughly every day. On days three and five, you will also add more fertilizer in the same amount as on day one.
Days seven through nine use half the phrase used on day one. This would be a quarter cup of complete garden fertilizer or one and a half cups of organic fertilizer. And water the bale again thoroughly.
On the tenth day, add a 10-10-10 cup or three cups of an organic fertilizer that is high in phosphorus and potassium. This completes the conditioning process.
Bales treated with a complete fertilizer should be ready for planting. You will likely have to wait a few more days if using an organic fertilizer. The inside of the ball should be the temperature of warm bath water or cooler. If it’s hotter, wait for the bale to cool down a bit before planting it.
Open a hole in the bale with a trowel. Put the graft in the hole and cover the roots with potting soil or compost.
Create a planting bed for seeds by covering the root ball with a layer of planting mixture 1 to 2 inches thick. Follow the planting instructions on the back of the seed package.
Regular watering is critical to the success of this method. Drinking hoses or drip irrigation make this an easier task. You can also use gallon milk jugs with holes in the bottom or inverted 2 liter soda bottles placed near the bottom of each plant to provide water where it’s needed.
Give your straw bale garden a nutrient boost about once a month or as needed throughout the growing season.
You are well on your way to growing a productive straw bale garden that you can enjoy all season long.
Melinda Myers has written more than 20 gardening books, including The Midwest Gardener’s Handbook and Small Space Gardening. She hosts the DVD series “How to Grow Anything” from The Great Courses and the nationally syndicated television and radio program Melindas Garden Moment. Myers is a columnist and editor for Birds & Blooms magazine. Her website is http://www.melindamyers.com.
The straw bale garden technique begins with the conditioning process, which starts the inside of the straw bale composting process to aid plant growth.
Photo courtesy MelindaMyers.com
