Conditioning the bales: Days 7-9

On Day 7 I checked to see if the bales were warming up and starting to compost. I checked several, they are not warming up at all. But they are wet.

Yesterday, Day 8 I turned on the soaker hose, and my boyfriend Edwin turned it off for me after an hour.

This morning (Day 9) I checked the temperature of the bales again with a meat thermometer, then my fingers. They are still not warm at all. I added 1/4 cup of the nitrogen fertilizer (30-0-3) to each bale and turned on the soaker hose for an hour. I didn't have time to use the spray nozzle to push the fertilizer into the bale, so when I turned off the hose the fertilizer from today was still sitting on top of the bale. I will try to rinse it in this evening.

The bales should be composting by now with all the nitrogen in them. Even if they are not heating up I am pretty sure they are composting. I know that the compost in my other compost bins never get hot, but everything breaks down just fine.

I am just going to stay on schedule with fertilizing. I will give the bales 1/4 cup more of the 30-0-3 on Saturday (Day 11) then 1 cup of regular plant food on Monday. Maybe I will check the bales Tuesday and Wednesday of next week and if they are still not hot I will go ahead and plant. I just don't want them to start heating up with my plants on them. I guess I will make sure they are watered well and that should keep them cool.

Conditioning the bales: Day 6

Last night I bought a 50 foot soaker hose (it was less than $10) and set it up on the bales. I let it run for about 40 minutes and this really got the bales wet. I don't think that I would have been able to soak the bales enough watering by hand, so I think this was a necessary investment. Perhaps the bales haven't started composting yet because they have not been wet enough.

This morning I turned on the soaker hose for another 45 minutes or so. Tonight I am going to check the temperature in the bales to see if they are starting to break down. According to Survival HT's video they should be around 120 F today. She says in the video that it's important to keep the bales very wet so they don't start on fire! I will water again tonight, just in case.

Tomorrow I will add another 1/2 cup of nitrogen fertilizer to each bale, and wash it in with the handheld nozzle. On day 9 and 11 I will add 1/4 cup of fertilizer, and on day 13 I will add a cup of general fertilizer to each bale.

And after that it will be time to plant, yea!

Conditioning the bales: Days 3-5

I watered the bales on Thursday night, but I was late to work on Friday so I didn't have time to add fertilizer and water. On Saturday it rained all morning and afternoon. I didn't have time to add fertilizer because I needed to leave at 2pm for my niece Savannah's 3rd birthday party, and it would not stop raining.

Today is Sunday and I finally added the second application of 1/2 cup fertilizer to each bale and watered well. I hope the bales will start composting soon. I will try to keep up on the fertilizing from now on.

I wrapped wire fencing around most of the bales to try to contain them. I put sticks in the ground to also help stabilize the wire fence and the bales.

Edwin helped me install metal stakes that I will wrap wire on or install some fencing to trellis the taller plants.

I think I need to buy a soaker hose, the bales are just not getting very wet even though I am spending a lot of time watering them.

Conditioning the bales: Days 1-2

I decided to grow a straw bale garden this year.

My yard is almost a quarter acre, but I have a lot of trees on my property and it is very shady. I have two small gardens in the yard but they do not produce well because of the lack of full sun. No part of my property gets full sun. Period. I have a small area of land behind my house which faces south, but it is usually weedy and not very useful. I cleaned up this area and decided to experiment with a straw bale garden.

I picked up 12 straw bales from Karen at Watson Hay & Straw in DeKalb for $5 a piece. Karen was very friendly and gave me one bale free since I posted her info on FB, and a woman from Naperville bought some straw bales from her as a result.

On Sunday I put down landscape fabric, and placed the bales on top of the fabric. I didn't know what kind, or how much fertilizer to use, so I added 2tbs of tomato plant fertilizer on each bale. Since it was supposed to rain on Sunday I didn't water the bales hoping the rain would do a good enough job.

It didn't.

That night I watched some videos on You Tube and in several videos they talked about how the bales should be placed with the "cut" side up. (On 3 sides of the bale the straw is folded over. One side is the cut side.) The reason for this is that water and fertilizer poured on the cut side will enter the inside of the bale easier instead of sitting on top. It is also better to plant crops such as carrots this way, because they do not like too much resistance when growing. (according to Survival HT)

On Monday I was worried that it might be hard to turn over the bales so the cut side is up, but even though it rained for many hours the bales were not very wet, so I flipped them easily.

On a video by Survival HT I learned that I was not using enough fertilizer by a long shot. She recommended using fertilizer with 30% nitrogen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC0vO3lHucE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKbejoV9UZE

Tuesday night I bought some lawn fertilizer at Menards that is 30-0-3. I bought a large bag for $30 (but there is a rebate) I could have bought the smaller bag for $8 and had plenty of fertilizer for the garden, but I want to fertilize my lawn as well, so I will put whatever is left on the grass.

Wednesday morning I put ~1/2 cup of fertilizer on each bale and watered them as best I could before work. After work I gave the bales another good watering.

I didn't water this morning (Thurs) because I was late for work, but I will water tonight. Then tomorrow I will add another 1/2 cup of fertilizer to each bale and water again. Soon I will take the temperature of the bales to see if they are starting to heat up and compost.

According to the woman on the video I should fertilize every other day, and water every day, for 10-12 days or until the bales cool down to ambient temperature.