Intro to Straw Bale Gardening: How Straw Bale Gardening Works

Straw bale gardening is a vegetable gardening technique that utilizes straw bales tied with twine and conditioned to act as a growing medium. You can use straw bales similar to how you would use raised beds in your vegetable garden—the difference being that they require no additional soil. You can even use the sides of the bales for smaller herbs and flowers.

After you’ve harvested your veggies, you can add the bales to your composting pile, since they will have broken down over the course of the growing season and transformed into a mass of organic matter. Alternatively, some gardeners might collect the material at the end of the season to use it as mulch.

You might see straw bale gardening referred to as hay bale gardening, but it’s important to note that hay—which is commonly grown and sold as livestock feed—usually contains Timothy grass seeds and alfalfa seeds that will sprout alongside your other plants.

Here are four possible benefits of using straw bale gardening over standard gardening beds:

• There’s no need for soil. If you have poor soil on your property—or would rather not use potting soil or potting mix—you might prefer using straw bales. You will need to fertilize the bales every two weeks when your plants are young since straw itself lacks nutrients.
• Setup is simple. Compared to the installation of raised garden beds or other container gardening methods (such as a designated area demarcated by boards or stones), straw bale gardening can be relatively low-effort and inexpensive to set up.
• You can plant anywhere. Using straw bales gives you the freedom of planting your garden anywhere on your property—even the ability to change the location of your garden if later you need to move your plants to full sun or partial sun.
• Weeds are less prevalent. Weeds spread and multiply much more readily in soil than they do in straw, so there’s often less weeding necessary with the straw bale gardening method.

The straw bale gardening technique requires relatively few supplies beyond your standard gardening tools. Here are some of the most essential supplies for the method:

• Garden hose: You will have to water your bale thoroughly as part of the conditioning process since straw bale gardens can dry out easily. Water the bales regularly or place a soaker hose—which has tiny pores that allow water to seep out slowly—on top of them. Alternatively, you could invest in a drip irrigation system.
• Hand trowel: A hand trowel is necessary for creating holes in the bale of straw, into which you will settle your seeds or plants.
• Organic fertilizer: Since straw lacks the nutrients your plants will need to grow, it’s important to regularly supply them with a nutrient-rich lawn fertilizer or organic fertilizer, such as bone meal or blood meal fertilizer (a high-nitrogen powder made from blood).
• Plants: Low-growing or medium-high plants work well on the top of the bales since taller plants might topple the bales or themselves. Avoid corn, sunflowers, and tomato plants, which are all known to be tall-growing. Better choices include smaller plants like cucumbers, squash, and zucchini.
• Straw bales: Look specifically for straw bales, rather than hay bales, unless you like the idea of sprouting Timothy seeds and alfalfa seeds, which are normally found in hay.
• Trellis: Providing your plants with support as they grow is crucial to ensuring they thrive and reach their full, fruit-bearing or vegetable-bearing potential. While stakes might be difficult to keep upright in the straw bales, a wide, short trellis installed behind your straw bales can provide support for vining plants.

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