Elaine,
I don't know about your round bales, but the ones they have out here on the west coast are so big it would take a forklift, a big one, to do anything with them. How would you even unroll it and make 2 or 3 out of one? I'm not sure what you have in mind, how you would plant them? Don't know. I do think we have had this question before and don't know what the person ended up doing.
Jeanette
Forum: open or subscribers-only?
I have had the same problem here in Australia - most of the farm hay is now done up in huge rolls by machinery. Someone suggested I try a horse feed supplier, and it worked - they still have normal "bales" of hay and straw. I hope this will help you, Kaelkitty.
Thank you for the information. I don't think I will do it but was curious if anyone had used the round bales. The concept seems to work.
I'm thinking about it for summer squash. They''ll be able to fall down the sides, and I think it'll be easier to harvest them. OTOH, with my luck, they'll all crawl into the middle, and hide *G*. It all depends on how the winter goes. If there are any old bales left in the spring when I can get new hay for the cows, I'll get one of the old ones up to the garden and see what happens.
Margo
Kaelkitty: Glory to be! You're our very first post from another continent that I'm aware of in the bale gardening threads!
Everyone else has been from the USA or Canada.
Have you been following the bale gardening threads?
Welcome aboard!!
Kent
This message was edited Sep 8, 2007 9:08 AM
Yee-Ha! I've come to the attention of the master! (but that was my fourth post - I've had three in the Melons thread as well, snicker!)
Now, all I have to do is sort out my bales, before it gets too hot here. We are on massive water restrictions, with the prediction that we may soon not be allowed to water our gardens AT ALL thanks to the drought. I'm thinking of trying to wrap my bales in plastic overcoats for the initial "seasoning" stage so they stay wet enough to get composting, without having to pour so much water on them. I'm also wondering if I could sleeve the base and the bottom few inches of each bale in plastic to create a "reservoir" effect and keep up the humidity around the plants. Time will tell. TTFN, Kaelkitty.
Edited to add: In the meantime, I've got plenty of reading to catch up on, I have just finished Thread Six, so I've got ten more monster threads to go to catch up to the rest of you!
This message was edited Sep 9, 2007 1:16 AM
Hi KK,!! What are your temperatures running? Other people have talked about wrapping the bales but don't know if they actually tried it. You might as well be a first. You might be inventing a new way to garden!!
Margo, you will need to direct the ends of your squash as they grow. And then use some netting to support the fruit. Or some panty hose. Now wouldn't that look funny!
Jeanette
Hi Jeanette,
It's not the temperatures, it's the lack of water that worries us here in Adelaide. Here is a link to last month's weather summary from the Bureau of Meteorology - small wonder we are approaching paranoia on the subject of water usage. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/sa/summary.shtml#records112
My ideas are mainly about how to do the whole thing using an absolute minimum of water, we are currently restricted to bucket only watering, and now they are talking about a complete ban on outdoor watering except from grey water or home rainwater tanks, unless we get some kind of weather break (real soon now, please, LOL).
Do you have anyone in the group trying this in Arizona, that would probably be as close to our current climate as I can think of in the USA? Bye for now, KK.
When we farmed, I used to redirect tub and sink water into an outside bathtub during the summer. Used that water for watering around the house. With toddlers around, quite often had to pull the plug and waste it though.
inanda aka Ginny
kk, is this supposed to be your wet season, or possibly you don't have a wet season. Anyway we don't have a wet season per se, As near as I can find out we have had only one barely measurable rain since middle of June. I know we had no rainfall in Aug. and none so far in Sept. I irrigate from a community well, which I am furtherest from source and nearly highest so don't receive enough water for my large garden. I have a personal well which delivers very small amount of supplemental water. i have been irrigating since end of Feb.
Hottest and driest summer I think on record. Days are of course shorter here now and nights are cooling. Was 41 degrees this morning. I am trying to get my small greenhouse clean so I can move plants back inside. i know it is going to frost very soon. Best wishes for you to receive some rain soon. And of course I hope we do here also.
Donna
Hey you guys, It just dawned on me that we are straying a long way from Terry's topic of should we open the forum to non-subscribers?
Guess we had better get this one back on track and move our conversations to a different thread?? Glad to see you KK and Ginny, maybe on a different thread?
Jeanette
I am usually for closed forums, except the ones that will draw in new subscribers. I believe you get what you pay for, but in this case I think an open forum will bring in new members from searches for strawbale gardening.
chris
PS. I would love to have a star or something next to subscribers name, maybe even that only subscribers can see. I love to be a giving person but sometimes I get wrapped up in conversation and find myself giving things to non-subscribers for postage, that never arrives. To find out later that was there first week on our site. No great loss, but I would love to be able to convince them to subscribe just for the perks. I know i can find out by clicking on their name, but a star would be instantly visible.
If you put your cursor over any poster's name, a pop-up shows whether they are a subscriber and when they joined.
I thought I saw that a few months back but then it wasnt happening for a while and I forgot about it.
Maybe it was something on my end or maybe thats when it was first created.
Thanks for making me remember. LOL
I still think a symbol by the name would be very useful.
I voted for closed... any member can read the first post of any thread and hopefully that will encourage subscribing to learn more.
I agree with icf530. I remember well taking a week-end to decide if this was a place I could learn from and where I would want to spend my time (and money--which is scarce). It was lasagna gardening that got me.
Strawbale gardening is one of the best to attract new subscribers, and also to appeal to the kind of dirt gardener that is likely to make a real contribution to the site as a whole.
I was just re-reading some of this thread and Ginny and KK I hope you didn't take me wrong when I said I wanted to see you on a different thread. I just meant that I tend to lead the topic astray sometimes and a lot of people don't like that.
Jeanette
Terry, what does it take to come to a consencus? Can't spell that. How do you guys decide whether we are open or closed on this forum?
Jeanette
Well, like I said, this one is a bit of an oddity. It looks like more people are leaning toward opening it. But....
Since there are some current participants who have spoken up and asked to keep it closed, we will probably acquiesce to their wishes and keep it closed.
It's only fair to them, since they posted to threads when they were in other subscribers-only forums.
If those individuals change their minds at some point, then we can easily (with a few mouse clicks, actually) make this an open forum.
Terry: Let me make sure I'm hearing you correctly.
A majority of the members voted for an OPEN forum and you're going to CLOSE it "since there are some current participants who have spoken up" against keeping it OPEN?
Kent
I, too, express surprise at the decision - determined by the minority. Hmmmmm.
I think what Terry is saying is that the people who spend their money, no matter majority, should have the decision to keep the freebies out.
Normally majority rules, but in this case I kind of think like Admin does. ON THE OTHER HAND, I can see both sides. i.e. The more people involved, the more ideas we get and the more apt we are to be able to keep the forum going.
Last winter, the people like myself in the north, don't have much going on but snow so there is not a whole lot of interest, so the thread almost died.
Jeanette, (who always has 2 cents to add, lol)
As I said, this is a rather unique set of circumstances.
The threads in this forum came from subscribers-only forums. This forum is currently a subscribers-only forum. The 16 strawbale gardening threads have never been accessible to non-subscribers.
The majority have voted in favor of opening this forum (and under ordinary circumstances we'd go with the majority), but some of the subscribers who have followed their posts to the new forum have voted to keep it closed. Unless they're willing to change their position (and I'm not trying to put any pressure on them to do that), I think we have to respect their wishes, even if they're in the minority.
Jeanette, in my several years' experience on DG, I have found many threads/forums that go dormant seasonally. Using myself as an example, I seldom go to Tomatoes over the winter (except to search out new heirlooms to consider in Spring) and I go to Recipes much more often since I cook more when I cannot be outside in the dirt (or bales in this case).
Hmmmm, I wonder how many folks have paid their dues just to follow these threads? I know Admin has no way of tracking that data but it would be interesting to know.
I've only been a lurker on this forum, as I've not yet taken the plunge into strawbale gardening. But I'd prefer that it remain a closed forum. As Darius noted earlier, information that you'd like to make visible to members can be included in the first post of a thread (nonsubscribers can view the first posts).
Also, I appreciate the position admin is taking here. If I had posted in the previous threads (in forums that were closed to nonsubscribers) and then found my words and photos moved to an "open" forum, I'd be disturbed. Yes, I realize it's just an "illusion" of privacy when you're talking about 7000 subscribers, but that's still more limited access than an open forum post that can be found by any search engine.
Terry: since this is DG's site, then they have the final decision.
However, since the chances of getting a unanimous consent on anything is usually remote, then it appears this whole open/closed discussion was destined to be closed from the very beginning.
I love the irony.
Back in the winter of 2004 I stumbled onto an article about a little old lady in Alabama who started a strawbale garden. If the newspaper had a "closed" site that required a fee to view the article, I never would have bothered and we wouldn't even be having this open/closed discussion at all.
Kent
I think it is so irritating when I search for an article and find it on J-Store and it is inaccessable. You can't even get to it without an active university affiliation. Information should be for everybody with an inquiring mind.
Hop off soap box. I realize this is a subscriber web site, and I joined because I wanted information I could not otherwise get.
A Little Old Lady who would like to start a strawbale garden in Alabama
This message was edited Sep 17, 2007 9:32 AM
Re open and closed forums. When I discovered I was posting on an open forum, I went back and removed my messages. I don't want who knows, reading my thoughts and/or activities. It was closed after awhile, so now I post, not too often I admit. This is the busiest time of the year for me, with lilium and iris.
I'm def. going to try a little SB garden next year.
Inanda aka Ginny who thinks we all have to use less water, more xeriscaping.
Is there a list of all the forums one can see when one subscribes, to tempt the newcomers?
Is there an intro strawbale article / Kent's first post or something, that allows newcomers see this has blossomed into a whole huge area of discussion and experimentation around these parts?
This matters to me; I stumbled across Kent's first post, and wanted to try this out - and want others to have the chance to try it out, too. I think it would be a great draw to encourage folks to subscribe to DG.
As long as there's SOME way the new folks can get their nose into then tent, then it's okay if we lower the flap. In general I'm much more excited by a creative commons approach to online community building; in practice I greatly favor those online communities that "weed the trolls" with the annual $20 we pay to DG, and for the kind of careful forum moderation that keeps things on track by communicating with folks and deleting egregiously off-the-mark posts. Terry and Dave don't even wind up having to "diemvowel" anyone! --and that's worth paying for.
If there were a sort of subscription pool of folks with a few extra bucks to offer, could folks on fixed / low incomes have a place to come ask the DG admins for a supported subscription? As a freelancer, my income varies from year to year, but I usually have at least a few leaves on my giving tree. I'd prefer both extra donors and gifted-with-their-subscriptions identities to be anonymous, of course.
Frustration!! I know it well. Even though I pay 75 cents every week for the "once a week" little rag they call a newspaper, put out in the county seat, I have to have a "subscription" to be able to access the archives to read an article that I should have torn out and kept in August when it was printed.
So, the subscription rate is probably more for the shipping than the $3 a month for the paper. Yes, I pick it up with the groceries but I should pay the postage? Guess after this I must tear those articles that I THINK I might want out and file them away for posterity. Maybe I can sell them back to the paper in 10 years to rerun. By then I should make money on the postage.
Jeanette
Im personally not opposed to non-subscribers reading these threads. Information is to be shared, thats something I love about DG. Everyone is so generous in helping each other, sharing information and advice. But if DG needs the subscriber fees to keep it running, then Im all for encouraging people to subscribe!
Not having full access to threads that I found interesting and very much wanted to read... that was the final "push" for me to pay my fee and subscribe.
Im very glad I did subscribe, the information and support here is just fantastic! As a young gardener, learning off older and more experienced gardeners is wonderful for me. Having people to talk to about gardening, who are actually INTERESTED in gardening is also great, and the comfort of knowing Im not the only nut-case in the world obsessed with growing things! At 23, I have very few gardener friends, and none that take it as seriously as I do.
I think it quite probably was the Strawbale Gardening forum I was trying to sneak into!!! After a few weeks preparation, my first bale garden has just been planted with tomatoes these last few days :-)
Thanks for all the info!
Lena
Lena: now you've got me dreaming about tomato sandwiches again!!! It's going to be a loooooonnnnnnnggggggg winter! :-)
Be sure to start a diary here. You'll be glad you did.
Kent
Lena,
Be sure to post pictures and make us all so envious that you are able to start your garden now.
I just went to a Master Gardner's session today and learned how we can have tomatoes by the 4th of July, EVEN in our zone 5a climate. Well, I'm ready to start now!!
Jeanette
Last night I started to update my Diary with pictures of my new plantings. And I discovered my very first little green tomato!!!!! Its very cute. And very green. I have been waithing for tomatoes for soooooooo long....
Will keep adding more pictures over the next few days/months as I find time. Almost all of my 114 tomato plants are in the ground or in the bales now. Just waiting on the last 3 small Delicious to get a little bigger.
The weather has heated up quite alot here in the last week. Yesterday I started weeding, but had to escape insde because it was so hot. But it was cold again last night.
Still waiting on my little pepper seedling so grow bigger so I can plant them out too. I purposefully started them late this year, because last spring we had such terrible storms, they took quite a battering. Spring storms SEEM to be over now.... heres hoping.
Are you able to grow anything over the winter at all?
LOL, yeah, houseplants. We had a skiff of snow the other day. The weatherman says we are to get an inch of snow this week.
No, we aren't able to grow very much.
Jeanette
Im sorry to hear that Jeanette. I dont think I could happily survive the winter without growing at least some peas, broccoli, cabbage or spinach! Its a cold, wet, miserable time of year, where even the weeds and the lawn grow very slooowly, but at least I can still grow something! Frosts are quite frequent, and waaaay to much rain leading to flooding, but at least we dont get snow!
My sympathetic thoughts are with you. I hope you have alot of lovley house plants!
Lena
Thanks Lena. So you can cheer up the rest of us with pictures of your nice garden.
Jeanette
I may be a subscriber, but I don't like closed forums on such generalized topics. Just my opinion.
Well Leaflady, it doesn't look like you or any of us has too much to say about it. Admin has decided.
Jeanette
Lena, where are you? I thought we would be seeing pictures of ripe tomatoes by now. What happened? I didn't think you were leaving on your trip this soon. Let us know what you are doing.
Jeanette