Hello everyone, my name is Amy. We live in the mountains of NC actually zone 6. Last year we started our garden on virgin soil. We had just purchased our home.
We did not have the best yield for the amount of work we put into it. I have some chronic health problems that cause me a substantial amount of pain, so this year have decided to give straw bale gardening a shot.
I have a dozen bales so far, and will be buying about a dozen more. I am in the process now of laying the bales out. Once I have them arranged I will drench them with water. Should I add fertilizer? How do melons and squash do in the straw bales? Pumpkins?
I hope I dont screw this up.
I also am doing about a dozen 'lasagna beds'. and direct sowing corn, peas and beans.
We'll see how they all go :)
Amy
Just starting out
Amy: good evening, my Ashe Co. friend!
Don't add any fertilizer to the bales during pre-treatment.
Use ammonium sulphate or Blood Meal, but I recommend you wait until about a week before you are going to transplant into the bales.
Read as many of the threads as you can.
No experience with melons or pumpkins, but they should do well. My squash does well.
Thanks Kent! I am actually just over the border, 0.4 miles from the county line :) in Watauga county. I would like to avoid using the ammonium sulphate, but will use the blood meal instead, thanks.
Amy
Amy, this year instead of using any "decomposing accelator" such as Ammonium Nitrate I am going to just use water alone for about a month and keep them wet. This should decompose the bales enough I hope. I just laid out three more rows of bales yesterday. One of the rows has two strawbales and two haybales in it so I will be updating my Test Plot thread during the season to compare just how hay does versus straw. The two rows I have added since last year will be used for cukes and squash. Once the squash is gone I plan on planting pumpkins in there also. Good luck in your endeavor!
Doug
Amy: my mistake, my WATAUGA County, friend! :-)
I googled your town name and saw it was on the line, and had a 50/50 shot and blew it. No wonder I can't win the lottery.
Doug: since you mentioned it, I'm doing the same thing. I set my 60 bales out yesterday and watered them down to see what they looked like in about 4 weeks when I would have normally started pre-treating them.
Great minds think alike!!!! :-)
Yeah we have had rain for the past two days, and it's supposed to rain for the next few as well! This saves me a ;lot of time! But the trade off is the animals all want to stay in the barn so I will be mucking next week.
I wont be setting my tomatoes, cukes, squash and peppers out until after May 10th, so I believe the bales should break down in time.
This is so exciting, cant wait to see how all my veggies turn out.
Also I was wondering which manure would be nest to speed the process, I have; Cow, horse, chicken and goat.
Amy: I'd love to be in your position with all the manure choices! :-)
Grew up with cows, ponies, horses, and I've cleaned out many a chicken house as a kid. Shoveled/loaded it into an old-fashioned manure spreader my Daddy pulled behind a tractor to spread it all out on our pasture.
Took a few days it seemed to sneeze enough to get the inside of my nose cleaned out!
Kent, oh yes, and just when all the stalls/coop are nice and clean, time to start all over again LOL.