After years of back-breaking weed pulling in our vegetable garden, we decided this was a good year to try out straw bale gardening. I’d heard a little about it but wasn’t at all familiar with the process and didn’t know anyone locally using the technique. A friend at work purchased the original straw bale gardening book and loaned it to me. It seemed so easy!
We started “cooking” our bales in early May hoping that would give us the two weeks needed to prep the bales and plant around Mother’s Day–our annual goal. Well, that didn’t work out so well. The weather was too cool and for some reason, our bales never started to compost.
I borrowed the book back from my friend, and sure enough, we had used slow release fertilizer granules. We purchased some new fertilizer and away we went. Two weeks later we planted and it’s been doing great every since. They do require a lot of water so the soaker hoses have really been helpful.
Things we learned:
- Use the correct fertilizer.
- Poke a lot of holes in your bales and get them really wet to get the fertilizer/compost process moving.
- Plan on soaker hoses and some kind of trellis system for plants to climb.
- Fertilize them once a week and water every other day or more often if hot and dry.
We’ll let you know how it turns out!
XOXO
Kauffman Family Farm 