Organic Straw Bale Garden Conditioning Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Organic Straw Bale Garden Conditioning Recipe? ›

Day 1-3: Soak bales thoroughly and keep them damp. Day 4-6: Sprinkle each bale with ½ cup urea (46-0-0) and water well into bales. You can substitute bone meal, fish meal, or compost for a more organic approach. Days 7-9: Cut back to 1/4 cup of fertilizer per bale per day, and continue to water it in well.

Complete fertilizers, such as 8-8-8 or 10-10-10, is an option for maintaining plant health. Evenly apply ½ to 1 cup of fertilizer per bale each month and water in adequately.

Compost: Compost is a rich source of organic nitrogen and provides plants a wide range of nutrients. It also improves soil structure and moisture retention. Manure: Animal manure, such as cow, chicken, or horse manure, contains valuable organic nitrogen.

I like to use blood meal as an organic nitrogen source for conditioning the bales. Another option that works well is feather meal. Whatever source is used, it should have a minimum of 5% active nitrogen content. Manure will just not work quickly enough, it doesn't have enough concentration of active nitrogen.

Water and keep the bales wet for the entire ten days. On the fourth day, pour five ounces (ten tablespoons) of ammonium nitrate fertilizer onto the bales. This fertilizer is often used by farmers and gardeners. Miracle Gro, Flurin, and Hibiscus are all brands that have ammonium nitrate in them.

Tip: For the first 3 days of conditioning you can use 1 cup of nitrogen and for the remaining 7 days cut back to 1/2 cup of nitrogen every other day. Step 4: Water! You'll want to soak your straw bales 2-3 times daily.

10-10-10 is called an all-purpose fertilizer because it can be used on almost any type of outdoor plant, including vegetables, shrubs, trees, flowers, lawns, and houseplants. Generally, it can be applied to any plant that doesn't need one of the three macronutrients in higher amounts.

And be darn sure you get them where you want them before you start the conditioning process. They are incredibly heavy once they get wet. They require lots of water. Another of the cons of straw bale gardening is the amount of water you'll need to keep the medium moist.

To plant seedlings — tomato, pepper, eggplant and greens — make a gap or divot in the top of the bale and set the roots in place. Fill in around the roots with a good-quality, peat-based potting soil, ensuring that the seedlings are well-seated and level with the surface of the bale.

If you are new to tomato gardening or looking to upgrade your tomato growing plans this summer, straw bale gardening may be the perfect next step. A shorter-term commitment than built raised beds, straw bale garden beds get your garden up off the ground without the investment and permanence of traditional raised beds.

Can you grow root vegetables in straw bales? ›

We decided to grow carrots in the used wheat straw bales over the winter. It proved successful (see photo at right). If carrots have been difficult to grow in clay or rocky soil, straw bales can solve the problem.

Straw is a by-product of growing grain. It's usually the stems of either wheat, oats, rye or barley. So those sprouts that look like grass are one of those grains.

How Long Do Straw Bales Last? Straw bales typically last for two seasons before the decomposition process makes them unsuitable for supporting vegetables. But this doesn't mean that you should just throw them away.

A simple protective measure you can take is to always stack the bales on pallets to get them off the ground. If you don't elevate the bottom layer of bales, over time, the straw will turn to compost.

Straw is high in carbon, so it's necessary to add a lot of nitrogen to create the environment for bacterial growth. Joel recommends blood meal as the nitrogen source. Apply it to the bale by poking holes in the top and pouring the meal into those cavities. Next, add water and let the bacteria population boom begin.

By the end of the season, the bales will break down, the extent depends on the crops grown in them and the weather. Some hold up well enough to plant garlic in the fall. Others collapse into a rich mound of compost, perfect for adding to containers, amending garden beds or tossing in the compost pile.

Inoculate Straw: After the straw has drained, disperse spawn evenly on all sides of the bale, getting as close to the center as possible. It's helpful to use a spade, or garden fork to get deeper into the bale. We even used a pry bar to loosen it up. Use one 5 lb bag of spawn for one straw bale.