Straw Bale Gardening

I have a friend who has recently become enamored of straw bale gardening—you know, planting veggies on top of bales of straw instead of tilling up the soil and planting seeds in the ground, the cold, wet, muddy ground as God intended. And like all good, newly-converted enthusiasts she couldn’t wait to bring her subversive literature over to my house and attempt to convert me.

The book that stared it all

Now, I’ve seen it done before and my reaction has always been WHY? It just looks, well—MESSY. Green plants sprouting out of shaggy, slowly decomposing bales of straw, not at all attractive to my eye. Then she handed me her propaganda, a book filled with various sized gardens and all sorts of cute configurations—there was even a straw bale garden in a shopping cart. The literature claimed amazing results with little effort—that’s sound good, right? And the small footprint such a garden would require could be easily and inexpensively fenced to keep those pesky elk at bay. I have to admit that at this point the entire idea was starting to sound pretty enticing.

It seems rather straightforward to get started: buy some straw bales—straw, not hay. Hay seeds will sprout and, unless your goal is to grow a bale full of hay, nobody wants that. You will also need some potting mix or garden soil, soaker hose, and fertilizer. Along with seeds and/or seedlings, that’s all you need. Before you know it one of my sons was interested in the whole process and started thumbing through her propaganda and that’s all she wrote.

I’ll let you know how it goes.