straw bale gardening-going to give it a try (flower, mushrooms, growing)

[twinkletwinkle22]

I never heard of straw bale gardening and then Mother Earth News popped up with it on Facebook and the next thing ya know I bought a bale lol. Seems like a simple idea, plant in a bale instead of the ground or a pot.

I'm also planting veggies in pots but buying potting mix gets expensive fast and it's heavy to lug home.
Hope my HOA doesn't inspect my back yard because a straw bale is def. not in the "allowed" rules.

Anyone else tried this?

[gemstone1]

I believe the best results are when the bales are decomposing....maybe after a year of sitting in the rain and sun. I tried with newer bales, results disappointing.

Regards
Gemstone1

[don6170]

Originally Posted by gemstone1

I believe the best results are when the bales are decomposing....maybe after a year of sitting in the rain and sun. I tried with newer bales, results disappointing.

Did you do the 2-week pre-conditioning, using fertilizer and water, before planting? It basically speeds up the decomposition process. Craig LeHoullier lays out the day-by-day steps for one method in his book.
https://www.craiglehoullier.com/straw-bales

[guidoLaMoto]

I grow mold and fungus in straw bales...although it's unintentional.

The problem reduces to this: a straw bale is essentially an inert, fibrous matrix-- just like vermiculite. You gotta add all the nutrients & water.

Unless you happen to live in a stone quarry with no soil at all, why do it?

[twinkletwinkle22]

Originally Posted by guidoLaMoto

.....Unless you happen to live in a stone quarry with no soil at all, why do it?

As I said in my 1st post potting soil is expensive and heavy to lug home. So this looked like an interesting experiment. Today the fertilizer arrived and I started conditioning the bale to break it down and be able to plant in about 2 weeks. Seedlings are growing now.

Straw bale is much less work than tilling a garden bed and would be expensive to hire someone to do that. My HOA would probably have a negative opinion about a veggie garden. Now if I wanted to put in a rose garden they might be OK with that lol.

I started out 35 years ago being inspired by "square foot gardening" and learned a lot. Straw bale is my hobby project but most veggies will be grown in pots and some herbs in the ground in a flower bed.

[ukrkoz]

Mushrooms...

[HB2HSV]

I did a variation of straw bale gardening that turned out great. Last fall I built 2 raised beds but I don't have enough grass compost or garden soil so I used straw bales instead, then spread over cow manure on top as soil. The cow manure was cheap, about $1 a bag at big box stores.

I had great results. I grew long beans, egg plants, zucchini and tomatoes and they were very fruitful and delicious. This season I will buy additional straws and fill them up to the top and repeat the process.