Absolutely Fabulous

...the first week in the life of the SBG, that is. 

Last Monday night, at about 10:00 pm, AJ & I finally completed planting and seeding the first ever Straw Bale Garden(SBG) in the City of Cohoes! (As far as we know) 

I know what you're saying: "Isn't that a little crowded for tomatoes?!"  I know this because my boss, Br. Brian, said it when my colleagues came for our first-ever SBG party after work on Thursday. But you must understand--there will be sturdy wire cages, made in the image of the tomato supports in Joel Karsten's book, holding the plants up in each bale. More importantly, there must always be basil between each tomato plant (one of my golden rules of gardening). The old Italians in Rome, NY always said it made the tomatoes have better flavor, but I don't know for sure--we've never done it any other way! 

The best part of planting the tomatoes and basil in straw bales was that not one plant wilted...and they've grown noticeably bigger in a week. Here are some shots of the rest of the bales, one week after planting: 

Peas sprouting nicely--along with a good amount of bird droppings! Anyone have ideas of how to treat the bales so the birds won't land on them?! 

 Pepper plants, and a couple of strawberries thrown in at the end just for fun

Kale on the far end just starting to sprout, mesculin lettuce mix and arugula in the middle bale, and beets sprouting closest to the camera. There are carrots planted on the same bale as the beets, but they take a bit longer to get going. 

The first few nights, when the temperature dropped below 50 degrees, we used 3 mil poly plastic sheets to tuck everything in nice & snug. This is one of the big SBG tips to make the growing season start earlier and last longer--capture the heat produced by the composting bales to make a "greenhouse" at night. We plan to put up the trellis system Karsten describes, but for now stuck a bunch of bamboo stakes in the bales and draped the plastic over them. It worked just fine for little plants. 

Once everything got growing, we welcomed a lot of visitors to the garden this weekend! Along with the group I mentioned on Thursday, we had some friends from church for If:Table on Friday...

some family for cookout and game day on Saturday...

 ...by Sunday, we were so exhausted that we just planted our deck boxes and containers and sat by the fire.

(I may or may not have had a two-hour nap in that chaise after church)

Lest I forget AJ's favorite visitor to the garden--I give you Bunard, the Backyard Bunny. 

Don't blame me. I had nothing to do with the cutesy naming of the creature slightly above rodent status (look at his little ears, though!)

It's been a great start to a great growing season--with only one near-tragedy, averted just today by my handy husband and a few pallet stakes. The bale with the watermelon plants (of course!) was composting too fast, threatening to fall over or fall apart at the seams. AJ pulled it together with some rope around the stakes after work today, and it looks pretty sturdy! Hopefully, it will hold the compression of the bale enough to continue producing nitrogen and other nutrients necessary for feeding the roots. 

The best thing about the SBG so far? Sharing it with so many visitors. We'd love to have you stop by, too, any time you're in the area.

See you on the farm,
Melody

From setup to seeding

Lots of people have had lots of reactions to the straw bales that appeared in our back yard about three weeks ago--

"Tell me about the hay."

"What's all this?"

"We can't wait to see what you'll do with it!"

but Carter's was definitely the best:

"Are we getting a horse?!"

Hmm. Guess that would make sense to a five-year-old racing around the corner of the patio to see this...

But no, we're not getting a horse. Sorry buddy. Something much better is happening in our back yard...

Your Grammy is going to revolutionize backyard gardening in Cohoes, NY! 

Starting from the start, AJ and I first learned about Straw Bale Gardening from his sister Melanie last summer, when we finally got around to visiting her & Ed on their enormous organic dairy farm in the thumb of Michigan. Which did not require her to have a stroke, as she once imtimated. But I digress. 

Melanie took us out back to see her kitchen garden, and the thing appeared to be growing right out of the tops of a bunch of hay bales. But that's only because I'm basically a city girl who likes to think she can grow stuff in the back yard, yet had been foiled in the area of vegetables for the previous four years by a long list of pests and pestilence including

Cucumber beetles

Aphids

Woodchucks

Weeds

Overwatering

Root rot

According to Melanie, these pests and more would be vanquished by the wonders of the straw (not hay, who knew there was a difference?!)  bale garden. Her pristine produce left me with a serious case of squash envy, and I tucked the information away for future retrieval. 

Fast forward to April, when I bought the book & started reading up on the technique.  The more I read, the more excited I got--and my dear hubby (bless his soft, pliable, and generally gullible heart) was a pretty easy sell. He and his buddy Scott ran out to Chatham or Cheshire or some country-sounding place where a part-time farmer named Mark had set aside 20 bales, put them in Scott's pickup, and hauled them back down to the river to greet me when I got home from Bob & Cilene's baby shower. I had mentioned the bales and my excitement to a colleague or two at the shower, so here we are--the grading is done, boot camp over for next year, and I am super excited to begin cataloging the straw bale garden experience! 

My intention is not to give you step-by-step instructions--I respect the technique developed by horticulturist Joel Karsten, and urge you to buy his book at the link above if you want details. Instead, I want to share pictures and anecdotes of the process, as the summer unfolds along with, hopefully, an incredible bounty of vegetables brought on by an expanded growing season and reduced pest count. Mostly, I want a place to put my garden pictures, which will clear up some of the curiosity of family, friends, and neighbors. And if you're inspired to plant your own garden, whether one bale on your Brooklyn balcony or twenty in your suburban back yard, so much the better! 

Before we achieved the lovely rows of bales shown above, some prep work was needed. 

I rolled out chicken wire to keep woodchucks from burrowing up into the bales and getting all of my root veggies. Now, we've not yet seen a woodchuck, but we live on the bank of a river and have been visited by assorted rabbits, skunks, and squirrels, so it's only a matter of time. 

Following Melanie's example, I laid out rows of weed guard between the chicken wire. I had thought we might mow between the rows, but Karsten's book convinced me that I'd want a place for heavy vegetables like melons and pumpkins to grow as big as possible. Bring on the watermelons (in Upstate NY?! I hope so!). 

I laid out the bales in north-south rows to maximize sun exposure (another of Karsten's inspired recommendations), and started the fertilizing/ watering process, which he calls "conditioning the bales." 

This began April 24, so yeah. It was cold. 

I want our produce to be as close as possible to organic, so it took quite a lot of fertilizer and a little extra time but late last week, I noticed mushrooms growing near the soaker hose! 

This was the step I was waiting for--when things can grow, you know it's ready for planting. 

We've bought the plants and seeds--probably too many to fit, but AJ says we can throw leftover beans or strawberries anywhere in the yard--and today is planting day!

Good thing we also got some nice poly sheeting, because it's still pretty cool--but Karsten says the "Straw bale greenhouse" keeps everything nice and cozy on these chilly nights before anyone else dares to put a tomato in the ground. The inside of the bales is around 100 degrees last we checked, so the seeds and seedlings ought to be just fine. Sorry Gram, I'm not waiting for Decoration Day this year!

I'll post more pics when we get everything planted....

See you on the farm,

Melody