Straw Bale Gardening?

I was gonna plant just some tomatoes and peppers in a few straw bales this season..

Of course I got to thinking about it, and wonder if I should pick up a few extra bales?

Would be awesome to see pics if someone has!

I grew some Tomatoes and also some cucumbers with pot but when some of the cucumbers and tomatoes hit the end of their season, your pot's not ready.

For this reason, when I did mine, I had some raised beds and I stood up, on their sides, some pallets. This meant I could tie the legal plants up, on the pallets,

and the not so legal plants down, away from people seeing them.

If you drive some rebar or something like that down into the hay, and drizzle in some really powdery stream or pond silt - that's when the water level rises, and sits a few days and goes down, this super fine soil is left, that's nearly perfect micronutrient mix for green plants since that's what rises and settles with the sun every day, and then descends on the roots of plants when all that dust is washed off leaves, etc...

the stuff in the water where it rises and sits, is very VERY fine and you know you're in the right stuff because it'll have this very medium brown color and it also will not have any gravel in it, at all.

It will be very dusty when dry. And if you pack too much of it in one space for roots to get into, the air won't be able to get in because technically see, this silt, is comprised of a lot of particles so small they're associated with being the clays.

You know clays are typically those minerals that break up into flat, shingle like particles that are real, real small.. and they'll stick to each other for various reasons well... the stuff that floats around in water is NOT all or even mostly that type minerals, but since there are some of those mixed in, and the particles are just incredibly fine, they're classed as ''clay sized'' and part of this definitionally means it's real difficult for air to get into it, if it's just mixed into a blob with some water.

So what you do is get a VERY find rebar, or something like that, and you just sprinkle those pond fines/stream silt/river silt/there's several names for this class material that supplies ALL plants in the wild, with their micronutrient wash downs, every time it rains - the stuff settles down around roots, so they get a dose of micronutrients with that muddy water, right?

Well - with your hay bale if you want to make the nutrition be better, easier, drive a skinny poker down into the hay bales, several different places in a circle around your plant, and dust some of that stuff in there.

When you're doing this you're making sure that even if you manage to mix your stuff a little one way or the other, the plants' roots can find and access a very common - THE premier source of - micronutrients, in nature, as plants grow.

You can water the stuff in from the top, too, but it won't make it far enough down that the entire root structure's spreading tentacles can access the minerals.

When I use this stuff in situations where technically it's a kind of soilless situation, coco, coco/perlite mix - sometimes a bucket of wood chips -I tend to stab down near where the seedlings' very first roots will grow, and then as the plants get older... and older... and are obviously putting on more and more weight,

I have a tendency to go back two to three times with the rock dust/stream silt/pond silt/pond fines and dust them in from the top, wherever it seems the roots are reasonably near the surface. I then water this into the medium and it seems to help the plants be able to stand my own personal, sometimes haphazard nutritional supply habits

One of the intuitively natural things about mixing this stuff into your fertigant water as well, is that - it tends to take the identical path down, it would in nature, and stop where it would in nature, so if you open a few paths down, the stuff will go on down in there and spread out a LITTLE.. Hay is pretty tightly packed in there so the stuff won't flow laterally, a long way, but just use a long nail, or maybe a tent stake, this kinda thing, and make deep but narrow slits or stabs, and dose in some of this pond silt/river fines/stream fines.

The best place to find this stuff is along a bank, where when the water rises, some of the water gets overflowed and sits out long enough, that as it has time to slow, it then will settle out. It takes a BIT of an eye to see where these places are,

but there are a couple of tell-tale things: the stuff has NO rough or square type, white sand in it. NONE.

It's REAL fine and dusty between your fingers and you can't FEEL this square sand too much, EITHER.

But hey: there is yet another trick with this and it's - sometimes - to mix some silica sand in with the micro-fines, so the roots have access to a little more silica, and to make it just a bit more possible for air to get into the places where the micro-dust is put by you.

There's already some micro-silica in that brown stuff you put in there but having a little sand in it, doesn't hurt - as long as you understand that as SOON as the sand gets the size of standard sand grains, the amount removable by the roots goes down quite a bit.

I'm trying to think if there's anything else. I guess not, but I do grow soilless like this in a variety of ways, and it's a really kinda fun version of hydroponics, to me.

When you put some stripes or some stabs of micro-fine dust down into your medium, you don't feel so bad about just watering the plants with some water once in awhile, to wash away extra nitrates or whatever you might think COULD build up somewhere in your root zone, and eventually burn the roots.

I don't know if your roots are going to come out of the bottoms of the hay bales, but I would think a good place to put a thin layer of microdust would be down where the roots exit the bale on the bottom.

It doesn't really poison the plants to use too much of this stuff in a chemical sense, but what it can do, is envelope the entire root shaft in a very thin, glue-like coating of mud, if the roots get into it too deeply and there's no way air can get in, it'll make the roots get root-rot RIGHT in that spot, where no air can get in, even if your medium is otherwise a good, adequate breather not prone to creating root-rot compatible conditions.


Ok LoL I guess spam over, enjoy,

4 plants is the limit for the straw bale expirement, so was thinking 2 bales with 2 each. Hit them with some rich compost tea to speed up the burn in process then plant.

Raised 55 gallon barrel with some drippers, or even a soaker hose pulled through the bale.

They will be up off the ground on a trailer or cart. I can get the bales probably cheaper than a brick of coco, or any other medium.

Sound good?

I don't know to what degree you'll consider doing it but another thing I've read about on novelty grow sites, is to plant your pot plants - or some other legal ones - not on the TOP of the bale, but rather, into the side of the bale, so you start out lower to the ground, and you can make a little more usage of your space.

It seems like an interesting way to grow to me, I haven't actually gone and gotten bales and used them.

That's a good tip, if you grew from the side you could make an insulated "bale box greenhouse" and simply toss a couple of polycarbonate roofing panels or plastic sheeting over it. The plants on the inside of course!

Then flip them up after the last frost..

So you are going to use straw bales as a grow medium? never heard of this before hehe. sounds cool. Would you just water really often with teas etc or would you add smaller particle amendments so that the roots dont dry out too quick (like worm castings?).

Yep, you start out by saturating the bales. Then after they're done "cooking" outside, a few weeks later they are ready to plant in. They do break down and feed the plants to some degree.


I was hoping to treat them more hydroponically and supply a constant low dose.

Will be my first time so i'm a newb at it. Maybe I'll just use one bail and compare the 2 to the other 2 in coco, etc..

Drop That Sound said:

That's a good tip, if you grew from the side you could make an insulated "bale box greenhouse" and simply toss a couple of polycarbonate roofing panels or plastic sheeting over it. The plants on the inside of course!

Then flip them up after the last frost..

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DUDe.. Wow, I think you're kinda hitting some nail on a head like that.

In no particular order, for no real reason, comes to mind that you can start your plants out, by kinda digging out a little cup in the hay, and put in .. I dunno, maybe 16 ounces of sand/silt/perlite/coco mix to help the plants mineralize through their early lives,

The "Bale box Bed" thing covered with plastic is just straight up genius, man.

That's something that I think... if people saw your little laid over plants in the balse, with the plastic or whatever holding them down and sheltering them early on...

seems like it would just be a dynamite thread. Because... really, nobody else is doing that too much, and the number of different directions you can come from tuning that kind of grow...

how to water them easily and well,

how to control the heat around them - I think in the very first days of one, being able to wrap the bale in just plain old cheap clear plastic would contribute tremendously to the warming.

You've got some internal warmth generating, then as spring comes on, you have the entire bale getting sunlight converting it to heat, then you wrap some plastic around that so the immediate, external environment is warmer, and - bang, seems like you could get a LOT of temp control between that, and the ''Bale box Bed" idea.

The bale grow is something we haven't explored a lot as pot growers, but it sure seems like you could get some

ca-R-azy innovation threads about creating bale gardens.

Like - first thing that comes to my own mind for starting plants early is to face the plants inside, like you say, leaned over sideways and held down with poly or plastic.

And then, for even earlier set-out, there's wrapping the bale in just some cheap painter's dropcloth type plastic, so the bale has a shield around it during the really cold spring.

Then I guess at some point you'll have people starting the plants out early, - but spraying the outside of the bales, deep green, so people don't really notice the contrast - and if they wrapped the bales in plastic after painting, then the paint would contribute to even higher early spring temperatures inside the plastic wrapped around the bale.

It's according to where you are, but - the ground always has that 'cold region' about 9 to 14 inches deep on it where the coolest air settles each night.

Your idea about the Bale Box Bed is just fantastic.

I had some wood chip and lumber beds. They were built on the identical principle to the German "Hill Culture" we see on youtube and elsewhere as "HugleKultur".

I used soaker hose and it had the problem that I couldn't really control how the water distributed. I didn't do this myself, but if I ever have the chance to spread out another feed line on the cheap and easy, I'll probably get barbs, and put little sections of soaker hose intermittently along standard 1/2 inch irrigation line.

My beds lost a lot of water due to my ill design with mine, I didn't create a way to catch the water that dripped out - I don't think that'll really be your problem - and in some places, I had the wood blocks just too close for meaningful roots to develop.

The pallets on their sides were a great idea and you really need something you can throw in there, that's gonna blow the profile of your plants out pretty well.


The pallets just worked fantastic for this and there's also the fact that it stops your plants from being burned so badly by the sun in the early days, since if you arrange the things correctly, the sun goes over from one side to the other, and then for half a day, one side gets full light, then for half the day the light is reduced a little so the plants don't just fall over from the heat.

I was down in a sea-level valley where the summer heat and sunshine just becomes a scorching oven.

I think you invented the ''Bale Box Bed" configuration man. Conceptually that sounds like it's just as slick and efficient as you can get.

Controlling temperatures,

Controlling height, - low stress training makes more weed, period..

It attends to security and makes use of space otherwise not as well used...

You might be starting a new, burgeoning growing style man.

Medium, insulation, building blocks, free compost for next season, and bio heaters all in one.

You could make the bale box greenhouse larger as you go, with one or 2 bales always cooking to keep it extra warm. Different varieties of plants have different starting dates anyway. So if you time it right your always adding a bale and planting a bale.

Then pop them up into rows when they are ready.



I could technically have my 4 cannabis babies out in a bale box right now (not planted yet but just to stay warm for free for 2 weeks) if I supplemented with a light. it takes 2 weeks to condition the bales so I better get started soon!

Have grown in straw bales...prefer keyhole gardens, though.

I just saw this an posted a thead on it (then deleted it. lol)

I'll try it for sure.

$10.00 for a certified weed free 50 lb bale at my local farm and ranch supply. 6-7 from a local farm. Gonna ask if they have any "crappy wet bales" and load my truck for a few bucks..

Drop That Sound said:

$10.00 for a certified weed free 50 lb bale at my local farm and ranch supply. 6-7 from a local farm. Gonna ask if they have any "crappy wet bales" and load my truck for a few bucks..

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Straw (not hay) is at a premium here. Not many farmers grow it anymore in my neck of the woods. When they do they're huge bales. Small bales are almost extinct.

The shift to large bales is in full force. Large round or large block bales. Watched a demo on one of the big block balers, crazy machine.

If you get old nappy bales, you will run into problems with molds.

aridbud said:

https://modernfarmer.com/2013/07/straw-bale-gardening/

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I went over and read this, it looks pretty straight forward.

How did your bales work out - what kind of fertilizing and watering?