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The Yarden » GLOG activity on February 15, 2012

Grow It Forward: Heirloom garden picture
1 of 3

    The Back 20 (feet).. you are looking at two years of straw bale garden experiment. The left side with the trellis is year one, and the greens on the right are in a two year straw bale.

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Liz replied over 1 year ago
Nice looking garden.....love the rooster (have my own collection in my garden).
tfacey replied about 1 year ago
One of these days, our city counsel will wake up and I will be able to post pictures of real chickens roaming around back there! There is so much food growing in that picture, its hard to name it all!
UnusualFarmChick replied about 1 year ago
I'm with liz.. Gotta love a chicken statue in the garden! You do have a big amount packed in your space. Bravo! Your hanging gutter garden makes wish I had a porch cover to follow suit. Makes a wonderful touch.
Gene replied about 1 year ago
if chickens are roaming around back there you can forget the food - they'll eat it. Mine are minature garbage disposals. About the only thing that will stop them is a hard squash rind - but if I cut it open for them they'll strip it down to the skin. I would be interested in hearing details of what you've done with the straw bales and details of your results and what you've learned, like, don't like about it. I've heard bits and pieces about this approach before, but never anything in detail.
tfacey replied about 1 year ago
@Gene: If I had chickens, they would be contained in a tractor that I can relocate all over, including the front yard! The straw bales have been an interesting experiment. What I really like about the concept of growing in strawbales, is that you can do it anywhere you have room for a strawbale. That means you could grow food right in your parking space at your apartment complex. Or even on a balcony. Plants are very slow to grow in the first year strawbales. Second year is better. Third year you essentially have new dirt. Because they are cold hardy and because the strawbales stay warmer longer than the ground in the fall, the cruciferous veg...... have really done the best. The tomatoes also like the strawbales, but the trellising is a pain; especially first year. Whats really cool is we took a hard, clay and shale growing area and have nourished it with the bales. Now we can use that area for more raised beds without the major expense of loads of dirt. The plan is amend this L shaped strawbale area with our own compost, add a heavy duty trellis and box it in for this season.
Gene replied about 1 year ago
@tfacey:I took a hard look at the tractor idea, but rejected it in the end. Chickens in my front yard would be an issue, and the tractor really wasn't going to work well in the garden both because of how I handle weeds and also because of how close I plant. I decided to leave the chickens in one spot and put them to work - they are essentially my compost bin. I have a few other compost piles for things I don't trust in the chicken pen, but the majority of my compost items go right into the chicken pen. The chickens eat a lot of it and "fertilize" it, but regardless of whether they ate it, they do a good job of mixing it all in and helping it break down. They're particularly fond of the time of year my melons start coming in...   So with the straw bales, would it work better if you just tilled the straw into the soil? That's supposed to be a good way of breaking up clay anyway. I have some of the worst clay here. Some of it couldn't be dug with a shovel when I started! I'm a big guy with a mean steel shovel and I just couldn't dent some of this stuff. I got a friend with a tractor to come work it over for me and then I started tilling stuff into it to get it to where it is now.  You mentioned heat from the bales - that's probably due to the molding that occurs when the straw is wet - farmers don't put up wet straw/hay because it will literally burn the barn down on them. Does the molding cause any issues for your plants? You mention that growth is slow the first year - how slow? Is it worth growing in first year bales or should you just wait for 3rd?  Is the bale still portable by the 3rd year (I've never left it sit around that long)? When using first year bales, did you need to add any fertilizer (like Nitrogen? I would imagine first year is scarce on Nitrogen and then as it breaks down further it starts releasing the Nitrogen it has bound up)?  Thanks!
loveylola replied 12 months ago
That looks great did you have any problems with mold
tfacey replied 12 months ago
Nope, just lots of crazy mushrooms!

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