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.
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.
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