2009 - 1st time bale gardeners - Part 2

Kent , those links have helped me more to id my problem , and last years , than anything I've seen . Just glad I continued to use Neem , the correct ingredent within . The closeups on the Cornell site made id easy . thanks so much . digger

Betty , your stuff looks so good .I won't comment on the cukes , cause I don't like them , because they don't like me .lol digger

Here is a view of the hay bale rows.

digger et al: here's another good link for tomato issues:

http://msucares.com/crops/comhort/tomatodisease/index.html

Betty, I am trying to figure out why your bales are decomposing so fast. How many plants do you put in each bale, and what kinds. I see some peppers and flowers in with your squash.

I am trying to see if I can help solve the problem for next year maybe.

Jeanette

One year I had some very loosely baled wheat straw. Those bales collapsed in no time and really lost their shape rapidly.

Thanks, Kent , I tagged that one too . digger

Jeanette 1 bale has 3 squash, the next has 2 bell peppers, the next has 2 egg plant, next 2 white tomato and last 3 intermediate red tomato. The bales across the back have 2 cucumber, 1 Italian frying pepper and the third has 3 Burgess climbing tomatoes. There is one small marigold in each bale.

Betty

Are they all coming apart, or just the one with the squash you showed?

I am wondering if the 3 squash in one bale is the problem. Maybe their roots are such that it is too much to have 3 in one.

I was checking them out today. The bale with the squash is falling apart the most. I even had to pull it out a little bit because it was covering the bell peppers. The others are falling apart where they were butted up together. The string is coming to the top and looks loose. I think the others will be ok but I may need to build some kind of frame around the squash. This is my first year growing any kind of veggie so I am learning a lot. My tomatoes have blooms so hopefully tomatoes and squash soon.

Betty

I think if you decide to do this next year Betty that maybe you should frame them in like some of the people do. Or not put so many plants in them. It sounds like the squash roots do a number on the bales.

Maybe that is what I should plant. I can't get my bales to decompose at all.

Those big squash leaves getting blown in the breeze and the weight of the squash will make a bale lean and twist and compact, and do all sorts of things!

The bales that always stay the best are the tomato bales because I have all that support from the trellis.

This an early girl plant and its looking really good. Can't hardly wait for those first tomatoes to ripen!

Very healthy looking plant!

Fifty-four days since we planted and starting to get some color on a couple of varieties of cherry tomatoes. Looks like several of my other tomatoes are just starting to turn.

Here is a shot of my Sungold Cherry plant.

This one is a Red Cherry if I read my chart right.

I've enjoyed my first time ever growing in straw bales this year. I did 9 bales this year and just a few minutes ago I committed to 30 of last year's bales. I wanted 50, but due to the drought here hardly anyone grew wheat this year and of what they grew the straw isn't worth the cost to bale it. The farmer I spoke with is running his combine in his wheat field this week, but he told me what's there isn't worth baling.

We've had 9 straight days with temps in triple digits with the same forecast for the next 10 days. So, I thought I had better get a couple pics of my straw bale garden before everything turns brown.

Jerry

Another one..

More..

Last one..

Absolutely wonderful Jerry. I don't know which is worse, your triple digits or our rain and cold. I have green tomatoes but if it doesn't warm up they will rot on the vines.

At least you have ripe tomatoes which is something we may not see this year.

Jeanette

Jerry: 2nd the motion! Excellent pics, especially with the one with you and the Deere!

HI All,
Triple digits are BAD news. This is what happened to my Sweet Bite cherry tomato plant after our January heatwave peaked at 47C/116F this year. What really ticked me off was the fact that the week before the heatwave I had just picked my first 4 ripe tomatoes and Mum said they were the best tomatoes she had ever tasted, so we were looking forward to a great crop over the summer. GRRR!

Ciao, KK.

The same here strawbales are falling apart....but still pulling very large squash and tomato's are starting to set nicely. Temps over 100 degrees here and winds blowing an average of 30 mph not good for any garden.....tomato plants curl alot during the heat but still getting tomato's. Still loving the straw gardens..

Here are pictures of the mixed greens that I planted from seed!

Here's one of my broccoli plants, grown from seed.

KK, I am so sorry about your plants, but you know what, mine look almost that bad and it isn't from the heat. We are still in the 60s here. Just can't get any heat. I am sure it will turn around before it snows. Probably the week before.

Jeanette

No such luck Jeanette, they are cooked to a crisp and completely dead. Actually, that photo is months old. The tomato "corpses" are long gone and the bales are decomposed down to half their former height (see attached photo). I wasn't very happy with the "pea straw" bales at all - they just didn't hold enough water for the plant's needs in our hot summer.

It's midwinter here now, and I am wondering what to do next - try for a winter crop, or wait until spring and start again. At least it gives me some time to look for "real" bales, LOL! This winter we are getting actual RAIN - after so many dry years it is a bit of a shock to the system. You can check out our recent weather here: http://www.weatherzone.com.au/station.jsp?lt=site&lc=23090&list=ds and our general climate pattern here: http://www.weatherzone.com.au/climate/station.jsp?lt=site&lc=23090 We are still on water restrictions though, because the local dams have a long way to go to fill properly, so anything that falls out of the sky on my tiny patch I am very grateful for!

I hope all of you are well and I look forward to doing better next summer.

Ciao, KK.

KK: appreciate the updates. Always good to hear from you.

Somebody asked me to share the method I used to grow lettuce/greens from seed on the tops of the bales:

I spread a very thin layer of soil on top of bales, broadcasted the seeds, and then covered with peat so that it would keep the water in while the seeds germinated. Worked well for chard and mixed greens. They came up in 2 days.

We had some very cold temps (40s and 50s during the day) and at one point I covered the tops with plastic to warm the seeds while they were germinating. I dont think that this would be necessary if you have milder days.

I haven't had a garden in many years, so I'm pretty much a newb, all over again. I have so enjoyed this forum about straw bale gardening that I have spent several hours here, today. :)

This is my first time to use straw bales - and if I had known how great it was going to be, I would have covered the whole back yard with rows of bales, instead of just the four bales I have planted. And I'd have mulched heavily between the rows with newspaper and MORE straw, to keep the garden area weedless and bermuda-grass-less. :)

I took a few weeks to prepare the bales, but I still didn't want to take a chance that all the "heat" wasn't cooked out of them, so I bought a bunch of dishpans at the Dollar Tree and filled them with Miracle Gro potting soil. There are big holes cut out of the bottoms of the dishpans, so the plants have had the benefit of good starting medium but they can send down roots when they want to. They have apparently already made themselves at home because the dishpans don't budge.

The potting soil gives me a good place to plant bush beans and garlic among all the cucurbitae - those were always my favorite companion plants. One dishpan is full of Roma flat beans, intensively planted at only 3" apart. The rest contain zucchini, crookneck, Lambkin and Ambrosia melons and Greensleeves cucumbers.

I think the dishpans are also keeping a lot of water in the bale - I don't water those, any more - I just soak the potting soil very well once a day. I'm going to be putting up a misting system right above them in the next few days to keep my deck pleasant. I think it will be great for all the plants, too. They are already drooping in the hottest part of the day, so I may provide some shade as well as the misters.

I'm also trying lasagna or sheet composting. I just have the four bales, a huge compost row and a deck full of containers. I only planted the compost pile a few days ago - I planted it very intensively, just in case the germination is low. I hope that will turn into a blooming green corner instead of the eyesore that it is at the moment.

I'm hooked on the bales, though. I'm going to look for someone who will deliver a bunch to me here so that I can let them sit and cook in this Texas sun until it's time to put in the fall plants.

All we have here is clay/cement. A half-hour's worth of rain will turn the yard into a sticky mess. Two days of no rain and it's concrete, again. But, a few years of bale gardening and this place could be the most beautiful yard in the neighborhood. :)

Here are my dishpan/bales. :)

It never ceases to amaze me the limitless imagination of people when it comes to gardening. This has got to be the most. So cool.

Jeanette

quilter gal: I see you've already joined us! I'm with Jeanette. Interesting take on what you've done.

Sweet!

Doug

Not particularly creative on my part - just necessity. :)

I have so enjoyed all the pictures and methods you all have shared - it's always nice to find other people who have the same insanities as you do. ;)

The white "planters" on the deck behind the hay bales are styrofoam coolers from Dollar Tree. They are an experiment this year and if they work, all my deck plants are going to get them next year. Some of them have been planted for two months and so far, so good. Being thick and white, the coolers reflect the sun and don't cook the roots. Cheaper than planters and very nice looking. I'm trying squash, cantaloupe, tomatoes, peppers and flowers in them this year - if it looks like they are getting too small, I'll just cut the bottoms off and set them on the compost pile. Some of the planters, I cut the top halves off and use the bottoms for flowers and use the tops for little "retaining walls" to hold good soil - I started pole beans and bush beans in those. The beans got off to a great start and keeping moist soil on top of the "cement" allowed them to put roots into the ground. When they break down, I will crumble them and mix the crumbs into the compost pile to lighten the clay here.

Just one cute little note to close - I took some very black bananas and cantaloupe rind out this morning and just dropped them between the piles of leaf mold and loose hay and went to do something else for a minute. When I turned around, my Lab was nosing around there and while I watched, she covered the fruit with about six inches of hay and leaf mold and tucked it all in. A furry gardener who actually helps. :)

That's interesting about the coolers. You didn't send a picture of that.

Jeanette

The coolers are in the picture above-behind the fence-look for the white styrofoam.

GG

Oh for heaven's sake!! You're right. There they are. That is so neat. You did a good job. Everything looks so nice.

Jeanette

Hi there and thank you - I am so happy just to sit out there and watch everything growing. It's kind of a mess tonight because I was doing a lot of work, but I'll get it set nicely tomorrow and take a couple of pictures.

Lovely gardening day today! I started early so that I could get everything well soaked and all the heavy stuff done. Then I put in the new misting system around my deck - it is a very well thought out system and super easy to put up. (Misty Mate 30) Got it hooked up and running at the hottest part of the day. 102º in my yard, but the deck felt like a very comfortable 80 or 85 within seconds of turning it on. And it's apparently even more effective in very dry air.

I left it on for an hour - despite the heat, nothing was drooping in my little garden except me and even I felt better after sitting in the misty shade for a while with a couple of glasses of ice-water.

I hope that tomorrow, I can start putting up the muslin "ceiling" inside the deck. I bought a bolt of muslin that turned out to be not quilt quality, but it was so cheap that I figure I can use it for one summer and put it under a lasagna bed in the fall. I might make a little awning for over my strip of bales, too. Those poor plants get sun from early in the morning to at least 6 or 7 at night and sometimes, they're really droopy by noon.

All of the squash, cucumbers and melon plants already have blossom buds coming on - and these bales seem to support more plants than I imagined. I can't wait to order in more bales to overwinter for next year. I don't know what kind of straw I have but apparently it was seedless, because I haven't had one sprout of grass out of mine.

Has anyone used baled alfalfa? Or maybe that's too green for bale gardening? I did get some alfafa pellets yesterday, so I need to go find that thread where everyone was talking about them and figure out which plants will benefit from them. :)

Have a wonderful gardening day tomorrow!