Straw bale gardens : the breakthrough method for growing vegetables anywhere earlier and with no weeding

145 Pages·2013·102.67 MB·English

by  Joel Karsten

Straw Bale
gardenS
The Breakthrough Method for
growing Vegetables anywhere,
earlier and with no weeding
Joel KarSten
Minneapolis, Minnesota
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DEDICATED TO
Grandma
Josephine
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DEDICATED TO Grandma Josephine’s garden
Grandma If we had ever printed business cards for my Grandma Josephine, her position
would have been listed as “professional gardener” because it was the one thing she
Josephine
knew more about than pretty much anyone else in the county. When she heard
that my plan after high school was to attend the University of Minnesota and
major in horticulture, she was heard to say, “I could teach that boy everything
he’ll ever need to know about growing a garden, and he won’t need to leave the
farm or pay any tuition at all.” She was, in fact, one of the best professors of hor-
ticulture that I would ever have. She started planting her own garden when she
was around 16 and she gardened right up to the end of her life at 93. She worked
her garden until she couldn’t get down on the ground anymore. As she put it,
“Getting down is easy, it’s getting up where the problem lies.” There came a time
when she relied on her son, my dad, to do the heavy work and eventually I took
over as her day-to-day helper.
She loved the idea of gardening as much as she loved the garden itself. She
spent her winters dreaming and planning ahead for spring—reading every seed
catalog that arrived from cover to cover and getting her orders together. She gar-
dened her own way, not always following conventions. Who knows, perhaps she
was the true inspiration of the Straw Bale Gardening technique. She inspired me
to try something different, based on a hunch, that nobody thought at the time
would actually work. Although she was gone by the time the Straw Bale Garden
was born, I often wonder what she would have to say about all the people stopping
by the farm at all hours, all summer long, just to get a peek at the garden and to
see how Straw Bale Gardening is done. I don’t know if it would have upset her or
made her really happy. My only regret is that I didn’t get to show her how easy
it is to garden my way. She would have loved that. “Work smarter, not harder”
was something she believed, and her gardens were proof. “Overlook the weeds,
and just focus on the flowers” was another saying of hers, which works well for a
gardener and isn’t bad advice other aspects of life, as well.
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Contents
InTr ODu CTIOn 6
STrAw 1 8
PlA nnInG YOur STrAw
BAlE GArDEn 2 4
COnDITIOnInG ThE BAlES 5 8
PlAn TInG SEEDS AnD SEEDlIn GS 6 8
STrAw BAlE GrEEnhOu SE 8 0
GrOwInG YOur STrAw BAlE GArDEn 8 8
hArv EST TImE 1 0 0
whAT rEm AInS IS GOlD 1 0 8
FAQS 1 1 5
PlAnT PrOFIl ES 1 2 0
rESOurCES 1 4 0
InDEX 1 4 2
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Introduction
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Introduction
STrAW BAle GArdenInG might seem like a strange idea at
first. When people hear about it for the first time, they almost always
ask the same question: does the plant actually grow in the bale? It
seems that we’re so accustomed to the idea that plants only grow
in soil that we have a hard time getting our heads around the idea
of dirtless gardening. But the answer is yes. You plant your garden
directly in bales of straw. Add some water, fertilizer and sunshine
(not necessarily in that order) and your garden will explode with
beautiful, wholesome produce. no tilling, no cultivating, no weeding.
It really works. And it is growing. When you count up all the people
who have attended my straw bale seminars, “liked” my Straw Bale
Facebook page and bought my booklet on Straw Bale Gardens from
my website, you get a number that’s nearing a hundred thousand.
And those are just the Straw Bale Gardeners I know about.
If you pay much attention to gardening, you know that two of the
most popular kinds of gardening today are vegetable gardening (as with
the whole Urban Homestead trend) and container gardening. Straw Opposite: Because the straw
bale gardening combines these two by growing vegetables (yes, you bale generates heat as the straw
decomposes, a Straw Bale Garden can
can grow flowers too) in what is arguably nature’s perfect container:
get a head start in planting and yield
the straw bale. Straw bales aren’t just the container, you see, they are ripe tomatoes weeks before the other
gardens in town.
also the growing media. As the straw inside the bale decomposes it
provides nutrients for the plant for the whole growing season. Then, in
the Fall, you toss whatever is left of the bale onto your compost heap
and you start with a fresh bale in the Spring. The straw bale cycle is
complete, and your root cellar is full of fabulous home-grown food.
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A little bit of history
Straw Bale Gardens came about sort of by accident. As any kid who
grew up on a farm like me can tell you, straw bales are everywhere—
especially if you raise livestock. Straw is used mostly for animal bed-
ding (see the next chapter “Straw”). It’s a valuable commodity and
it consumes a lot of a farmboy’s summer. Stacking straw bales on a
bale rack, then stacking bales, and then stacking more bales was a
job that never seemed to end. It starts from the moment a farm kid
is big enough to lift a bale of straw and smart enough to stack the
rack securely to avoid a rack disaster. In fact, one coming-of-age
moment in farm life happens the first time you are trusted to stack
bales on a rack by yourself. If your rack makes it to the barn without
spilling any bales, you are one step closer to becoming a farm man.
Once straw is dried, baled and racked, it must be put into dry
storage quickly. Wet bales are worthless for bedding because they
will never fully dry out. So when a rogue bale would tumble off
the rack unnoticed in transport and eventually be rained upon,
The Author as a farmboy, working hard there was no point in doing anything with it but leaving it alone.
and dreaming up new ways of doing Within a few weeks those bales would begin to turn gray, and a few
things.
sprouts would emerge from the thistle seeds that floated over in the
wind. The thistles would bloom and grow into some of the tallest,
healthiest plants on the farm. After years of watching this happen,
inspiration struck, and the original seed for Straw Bale Gardening
was planted in my mind.
A dorm room is no place for a garden
leaving the farm and heading for my four-year vacation at the Uni-
versity of Minnesota came with lots of perks. no livestock to feed,
no chores, no firewood to split and stack, and no garden to tend. But
after four years of living in dorm and student apartments, I started to
miss having a garden. Although I’d run a business doing landscaping
for my professors, the growing experience wasn’t complete without
a vegetable garden. I longed for the fresh produce from Grandma’s
garden that I’d grown up with. So when I bought my first house and
discovered that the soil was all heavy clay and construction backfill, I
was disappointed. With little money available to spend on major soil
modifications, I almost gave up on having a vegetable garden. But
then I remembered those straw bales with the big healthy thistles
growing taller than me, and I decided to do some experimenting.
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Start small and grow
I ran my “new idea” involving the use of decomposing straw bales as
a substrate for growing vegetables past several of my old professors.
They were unimpressed. So I called my dad for some encouragement.
I asked him if he thought the idea had merit and he simply said, “Well
let’s try it. What’ll it hurt?” The following weekend I drove out to the
family farm. dad had scrounged up a whole rack stacked full of beautiful
straw bales. I wanted to start small, maybe with a couple of bales, but he
insisted that you couldn’t learn much with a couple of bales. Instead,
he said, we needed to run some trials using many different methods.
So we laid out around 50 bales and got started planting.
One small Straw Bale Garden for man;
one giant leap for gardening
It worked! The plants that sprang up from the bales grew just like those
old thistles did. We learned a lot about gardening in straw bales that
first year, and we’ve learned more, much more, every year since. In the
process I took notes and came up with about 25 pages of details on My sister Laura and Grandma Josephine
how to grow a garden in straw bales (mostly so dad had an easy way tending the chickens on the family farm.
Yes, that is a little genuine Minnesota
to explain what was going on to all the people who started coming
straw in the foreground.
to his farm to see about this straw bale business they’d heard about).
Since then the questions have kept coming, and my notebook on
Straw Bale Gardening has gotten thicker and thicker. This book, Straw
Bale Gardens, reflects the years of experience it has taken to “perfect”
the method and includes all the knowledge I’ve accumulated about
Straw Bale Gardening since I first discovered that it worked. And
worked better than any of us expected. I can’t count the number of
people who have said to me over the years that they are planning to
double or triple the number of bales they are growing next year, due
to the success they had the past year. Some have even come to my
seminar for a second time just to bring pictures and to brag about
their success. It is very rewarding to see so many people having so
much success with Straw Bale Gardening by growing their own food
and enjoying the fresh produce, without the work they were used
to doing in their old soil gardens.
I am not suggesting that everyone who wants to give Straw Bale
Gardening a try should start with an entire rack of 50 straw bales.
It’s probably a better idea to start small and grow bigger as you get
a feel for how much produce you can handle. Because if you follow
the relatively simple instructions in this book, I can assure you that
you will be successful. Just be prepared to answer some questions
from your neighbors—there will be plenty.
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Straw Bale Gardening vs. Traditional Gardening
ATTrIBu TE STrAw BAlE TrADITIOnA l COnTAInEr/
GArDEn SOIl GAr DEn rAISED BED
GArDEn
wITh m IX
nOT SOIl
75% less labor X - X (first year only)
Raised height, easy planting X - X
No weeding X - X (first year only)
Very low input/start-up cost X X -
Extends the growing season X - -
Higher germination on seeds x - -
Predictable performance X - X (first year only)
Impossible to overwater X - -
Holds moisture well X - -
Creates new media yearly X - -
Easy to move location X - -
Automated water daily is okay X - X
No crop rotation needed X - -
Can plant top and sides X - -
Creates loads of A+ compost X - -
Prevents disease issues X - -
Prevents insect issues X - -
Prevents rabbits/deer issues X - -
Can be located anywhere X - -
Prevents early season frost X - -
No heavy work, tilling X - -
No tools other than hand trowel X - -
Warmed root zone at planting/seeding X - -
Eliminates soil-borne disease X - X (first year only)
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