Straw Bale Gardens: The Breakthrough Method for Growing Vegetables Anywhere, Earlier and with No Weeding

236 Pages·2013·35.7 MB·English

by  Joel Karsten

STRAW BALE
GARDENS
The Breakthrough Method for
Growing Vegetables Anywhere,
Earlier and with No Weeding
JOEL KARSTEN
Grandma Josephine’s garden
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 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 horticulture 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
gardened 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
which works well for a gardener and isn’t bad advice other aspects of life, as
well.
INTRODUCTION
STRAW
PLANNING YOUR STRAW BALE GARDEN
CONDITIONING THE BALES
PLANTING SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS
STRAW BALE GREENHOUSE
GROWING YOUR STRAW BALE GARDEN
HARVEST TIME
WHAT REMAINS IS GOLD
FAQS
PLANT PROFILES
RESOURCES
INDEX
Because the straw bale generates heat as the straw decomposes, a Straw Bale Garden can get a head start in
planting and yield ripe tomatoes weeks before the other gardens in town.
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
popular kinds of gardening today are vegetable gardening (as with the whole
Urban Homestead trend) and container gardening. Straw bale gardening
combines these two by growing vegetables (yes, you can grow flowers too) in
what is arguably nature’s perfect container: the straw bale. Straw bales aren’t
just the container, you see, they are 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.
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 bedding (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, there was no point in doing anything with it but
leaving it alone. Within a few weeks those bales would begin to turn gray, and a
few 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.
The Author as a farmboy, working hard and dreaming up new ways of doing things.
A dorm room is no place for a garden
Leaving the farm and heading for my four-year vacation at the University 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.
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
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.
My sister Laura and Grandma Josephine tending the chickens on the family farm. Yes, that is a little genuine
Minnesota straw in the foreground.
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 how to grow a garden in straw
bales (mostly so Dad had an easy way to explain what was going on to all the
people who started coming to his farm to see about this straw bale business
they’d heard about).
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.
Straw Bale Gardening vs. Traditional Gardening
ATTRIBUTE 75% less labor
STRAW BALE GARDEN X
TRADITIONAL SOIL GARDEN
-
CONTAINER/RAISED BED GARDEN WITH X (first year only)
MIX NOT SOIL
ATTRIBUTE Raised height, easy planting
STRAW BALE GARDEN X
TRADITIONAL SOIL GARDEN
-
CONTAINER/RAISED BED GARDEN WITH X
MIX NOT SOIL
ATTRIBUTE No weeding
STRAW BALE GARDEN X
TRADITIONAL SOIL GARDEN
-