Can we start a thread discussing the different types of bales - hay, straw, alfalfa, other - and people can chime in with what they've used and how did they do, etc.
In different areas of the country, different types of bales are available and it'd be really useful info to have this all in one thread.
So please post on what you have used, what worked, what didn't, your thoughts, etc.
Thanks,
Gwen
Different types of bales - how do they compare?
Boy, Gwen, I don't know if there is enough info or bales to do a whole thread on them. Why don't you go ahead and do one? As a sub to the strawbale gardening. Or, if you don;t know, send Kent a message and ask him. It's his forum.
Jeanette
I just was hoping people would post here on this thread about what kinds of bales they have tried and if they have any comments on them.
Gwen
Well Gwen, all of us at one time or another have discussed the different bales, so I'm afraid you might get the same answer that Dovey got when she asked a question kind of like that.
Unfortunatley the threads are long and have a lot of chit chat in them so it is hard to find specific information in them. The only suggestion I would have is to try querying different words up in the right hand corner and see what comes up. Like "bales". I know, you will probably get a ton of them and if you have a fast computer you might be able to cull them out fairly fast.
With my dial-up it would take me forever. Don't know what else to tell you.
Jeanette
Gwen,
I have yet to garden anything in a bale... or on a bale.
From what I've read people seem to prefer Wheat Straw bales.
Another little bit or two I picked up was:
Hay bales have more seed (seed that will sprout and be a bother) than straw.
Hay bales are more expensive (it's used for horse feed) than straw.
Straw, most often used for cows or bedding, and is cheaper.
Now that I'm made these wildly assumptive statements perhaps the real experts will come and shoot me outta the water and share their knowledge...
Yes, I know it's a sacrificial move on my part... no need to thank me.
If I've only one life to give let me give for a fellow gardener.
Saint Dove ;-p
"A poet can survive anything but a misprint"
Oscar Wilde
This message was edited Feb 13, 2008 12:41 PM
Saint Dove you are right on. LOL
Some people prefer the hay bales for the nitrogen from the leaves. Even in the straw bales you might get some growth from the seeds like oats, wheat, etc. but they normally pull easily or can be cut off.
If you can find either one that is moldy they would be cheaper and good for our use. Not having bought or searched for hay, I don't know how much it costs, but you are probably right, but even the straw is expensive depending on what part of the country you are in.
Oblong bales vs round: I don't know how you would plant round bales since they are so big. And, if you took them apart, you would defeat the purpose of the height. Oblong is what we are looking for, and there are different sizes of those. So, hopefully you could find some that are easy for you to handle.
Hope this has helped.
Jeanette
Gardening is a process, it seems to me nothing is ever settled in short order.
I'm gonna buy what I can find at a good price and from season to season I will be able to tell which type of bale works best for me.
Hooray!! You got it Dovey. That is exactly what we all did when we started. The reason we don't help you, or perceived that we don't, is that every part of the country is different. All types of gardening do not work in all parts of this big country.
Somethings some of the people here speak of, I have never heard of. Therefore, I have to research, ask, or GOOGLE. I wish I had bought stock in that guy when they first went public with it. Just my use alone would have made all stockholders rich.
Fortunately for those people in the South, they have more than one gardening season. I think. So, trial and error does not take them so long to learn as it does up here in the north, where a whole season might be gone on something that didn't work.
So, that is why we can't always help as much as we would like and, hesitate to steer someone in the wrong direction. It might work for me, but not for you. I hope I made it a little bit clearer, and didn't muddy it too much.
Jeanette
Gwen: start any thread you like to see if it gets a response. I miss them sometimes. If a question goes unanswered for a while, just "bump" it back to the top with another post of your own.
And, yes, all these threads are a lot of reading to find an answer amongst all the chit chat. It's like watching soap operas, the longer you watch, the more familiar you become with the plots.
Kent
LOL Kent, the plots or the people? I never thought of it that way but maybe we need a little action in some of these posts.
Jeanette
Jeanette: "As The Straw Bale Turns", "The Edge of Straw", "All My Bales", "The Young and the Baleless", etc.
Kent
Now is the (Baleless) winter of my discontent
made glorious by the seed catalogues
of summer to come.. (let's raise the tone from TV soap opera to REAL theatre!)
(With apologies to Wm. Shakespeare!)
Hope all is well with everyone - I have picked my second eggplant and have eight flowers now on the plant - they are very pretty. Our summer is nearly done here in Australia, the weather has been weird so who know what autumn will bring! Last year it was quite hot well into April/May - we are still on major water restrictions due to the drought here in South Australia, even though there has been serious flooding in many areas on the eastern coast of the country - some of the coastal parts of Queensland and New South Wales have been completely inundated by rain bearing tropical systems coming down from the North but we usually miss all of that and only get rain if it comes up from the west and south - usually from June to September.
Ciao, Kaelkitty.
What is that bloom? Is that your eggplant? I don't eat them so have never seen them grow. I know, now I am going to hear from all of you southerners with recipes. LOL
It is very pretty anyway.
Good to hear from Australia again!! I'll bet you have some of those little hoppers there don't you Kaelkitty? I asked Lena in New Zealand, but she said no she thought you had them. Wallabys.
I'm glad it is you that is going into autumn and we are on our way to spring. I hope. Got snow again last night.
Jeanette
Hi Jeanette,
Yeah, that is an eggplant flower - they are about 3cm (a bit over an inch) across; and purple is my favourite colour, so I couldn't resist taking the photo. I have been frying the slices of the fruit in butter and having them for breakfast - they are delicious!
There are no wallaby's (or kangaroos!) in my neighbourhood as I live about 5km (3 miles) from the central business district of a city of about 800,000 people, but some of my friends on the Australian forum here on DG live in country areas
where they are common. My local wildlife is pretty much confined to various birds plus an occasional lizard or two. The New Zealanders may not have wallabys, but they imported our possums a while back and boy are they sorry! Sometimes it is a really bad idea to transplant critters to other places!
I hope you and yours are all well - I am looking forward to hearing all of your gardening exploits in the new season.
Ciao, KK.
Yes, it is not good to transplant animals. Just like some plants that become noxious weeds to other places.
Don't hold your breath on the gardening from this area. It started thawing some of the snow last week but then turned cold again so the end of that. And, sometimes our coldest weather is the end of this month.
Jeanette
Opossums! Dont even get me started on the trouble those adorable little pests cause over here! We loose so much native forrest every year, and with it valuble habitats for birds and other wildlife. A very sorry mistake.
The last two official days of summer are upon us, but I dont see the weather cooling down in a great hurry. Looks like its going to be a nice drawn out warm autum. Heres hoping.
Lucky you with your eggplants Kaelkitty! I have tried to grow them, three times unsuccessfuly. The climate must be too cold this far south. I love eggplants too. I roast them with a light brushing of freshly crushed garlic, olive oil, sea salt and pepper. Or thick slices stuffed with basil leaves and bluevein cheese and roasted. Mmmmmmm. They are nice and cheap in the shops at the moment.
Gwendalou: To steer the conversation thread back to its original intention, I used Barley straw bales this year, with reasonably successful results. I think Wheat and Oat are also available in my area. As are clover and alfalfa hays. What have you managed to find so far?
And.....to hijack back to the critters :)
I'm guessing that Kaelkitty and LenaBeanNZ mean this guy, rather than the 'Possum we North Americans are used to?
http://www.richard-seaman.com/Mammals/Australia/PossumSideView.jpg
While I'm actually very fond of my local 'possums (and they of my cat food), these little furreigners are soooo cute.....
looks like a cross between a rabbit and a rat.
Jeanette
Yeah Catmad,
That's the one! If you are not careful they will get inside your roof space and damage stuff. They also make the most appalling noises in the middle of the night in the breeding season - it is like being woken up by a banshee. In Australia, all our native wildlife is automatically under regulatory protection so you are not allowed to kill them. There are professional Possum (Note: NO "O") trappers who will call at your house and set up cage traps in your ceiling so they can relocate problem animals. What Fun!
TTFN, Kaelkitty.
PS. They might LOOK cute but these guys bite and the big males can be the size of a medium to large cat!
Gwen: I had thought the same as you re:that straw would costless than hay, but that has turned out to be a misconception. The straw, which is in extremely short supply here in Bucks County, PA, is about 2x the price of hay (which is plentiful).
A local farmer told me today that the wheat seed was so high last year that a lot of them just didn't plant it. I think I'm going to look at this as an opportunity for meaningful research and do a bit of both.
Suz
I've done both, and liked the hay better. It does decompose faster, but since I hadn't planned to re-use, that's okay. Straw was harder to plant in for me, and mine was full of seeds, where the cheap hay I bought (well, cheap as far as what was around here) had very few.
On another thread SuzanSkylark was concerned with weeds growing up thru the bales. I never had weeds, but my tomatoes rooted down into the ground, so I wouldn't put anything under them.
catmad: good point on putting any sort of barrier UNDER the bales. The roots do get into the grounds for some veggies like tomatoes.
Plus, the ground under the bales stay good and moist and will provide some water to the plants.
Kent
Hmmm. . . I was actually thinking that the barrier under the bales might help to keep the moisture in the bales . . .but no, huh?
Suzan: the bales will retain plenty of moisture w/out any artificial help as long as you water the bales regularly.
I also think the bales right on the ground really help condition the soil. Good crop of earth worms, too.
Kent
OK. Got my hay bales today- and had to move the straw bales (which had been rained on). The hay bales surely are lighter! Tomorrow I hook up the hoses and start watering.
Suz