"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
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