Our Second Year of Straw Bale Gardening

I don’t know if we can technically call it “straw bale” gardening as this year we decided to use Bermuda grass bales. As we continue with our garden this year I will keep you posted on what we are doing and what we have learned along the way.

If you want an easy way to garden without all that back breaking digging and weeding and general “dirty” work, then straw bale gardening is perfect for you. Also, if you don’t have the room for a traditional garden this is also perfect.

We follow Joel Karsten’s techinques. He wrote the book (literally) on straw bale gardening. Here is the link to his website http://StrawBaleGardens.com (I am not paid a fee for sending you this link.) I highly recommend you buy his book. There is a link on his website to purchase one online. You may also find one at your local farm store.

We started “conditioning” our bales the beginning of April and planted plants and seeds on April 28th, 2018. Here is a photo of a zuchinni plant we seeded directly into the bale. This is one week later!

And you know your bales are conditioned properly when they start growing mushrooms! You can’t eat these; we just smoosh them back into the bale. (Yes, smoosh is a technical term used frequently in straw bale gardens!)

I will be posting more about the strawbale garden as we continue through the summer. The tomatoes! Oh wait until you see them!