Our take on straw bale gardening

An update on straw bale gardening: Several factors you will not read in the hype on this idea is the fact that straw bales shed constantly; so if you put it on your porch or in your lawn you will have a mess all year long. This straw really is difficult to get the lawn mower to suck up or even rake. It blows around the yard and eventually makes a mess all around the area that you have to pick up one piece at a time by hand. So I believe we have to contain that straw to make the straw bale idea practical.

 

We live in a X-fruit growing area (people buying from Brazil etc. put hundreds out of work in our area of Emmett Idaho) so we have hundreds of these fruit boxes that need a home or will be wastefully burned or thrown away. The boxes are about 42 inches by 41 inches and 30 inches high. I feel they could be bit higher to be comfortable as a garden container. We played with the idea a few years ago but the thought of filling that much up with decent top soil did not seem practical. And then once the box was full of soil there would be no way to move it.

 

Straw as the foundation really seemed like a good combination here. The bale fit perfectly and was light weight. Then add the idea of straw bale gardening and we have a raised bed that is very simple and inexpensive.

 

By putting the straw bale in these boxes we were able to contain the straw mess and raise them up slightly for better access. There is an air gap on the sides which is probably a good thing because the wood is less liable to rot. I presume the straw bale will be decomposing by this fall and we will remove it. How much damage the moisture will do to the painted plywood is still out for review.

 

. The one pictured is a bit hard to move by your self so this weekend we cut one in half. That made a huge difference in the ability to make it more mobile and it fits a single bale fine.

 

As I said, I still feel it is a bit low and we are trying to put a counter top over them. This might really make them work better because you'd have an open end, then a water proof top to put pots on. I'll update as we experiment.