STRAW BALE GARDENS Complete BREAKTHROUGH VEGETABLE GARDENING METHOD JOEL KARSTEN Contents INTRODUCTION SBGS IN SMALL, URBAN AND UNUSUAL SPACES STRAW PLANNING YOUR STRAW BALE GARDEN MAKING YOUR OWN BALES CONDITIONING THE BALES ORGANIC STRAW BALE GARDENS PLANTING SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS STRAW BALE GREENHOUSE GROWING YOUR STRAW BALE GARDEN SBGS AND WATER HARVEST TIME WHAT REMAINS IS GOLD PLANT PROFILES PHOTO AND GARDEN CREDITS, RESOURCES CONVERSIONS INDEX MEET THE AUTHOR Introduction IT SEEMS LIKE I’VE TOLD THE STORY of Straw Bale Gardening a million times over the years, to audiences big and small all over the world. But I never get tired of it. It’s a good story and it keeps getting better, in large part because my method is young and always evolving and improving. That’s also the reason we chose to come out with a new edition of my book so soon after the first Straw Bale Gardens was published just a couple of years ago. The tens of thousands of gardeners who’ve decided to give my SBG technique a try are an enthusiastic group, and I get an enormous amount of direct feedback and many, many questions. I listen, and I’m constantly working to expand the techniques in ways that address the most common concerns people have. This has resulted in some very exciting additions to the information and advice I have offered before. The basics haven’t changed at all, but I think you’ll find several new ideas that make the SBG method more accessible and more practical for even more people. When folks hear me describe Straw Bale Gardening for the first time, the reaction is fairly predictable. At first, they wonder how it works and they ask questions like “How to you get the dirt into the bales?” But then there is a moment where the light goes on and they understand that you don’t use dirt at all: it’s the straw itself that feeds the plants. I love the way you can see the sudden look of understanding when people smile and nod and even shake their heads in a kind of amazement. It might be what I love most about teaching the SBG method. Once people get it, the questions usually come in waves. Where do you get the bales? Can you make an organic SBG? What about planting seeds? Can I put an SBG on my deck or driveway? Does it really work? In this second edition of my book I’ve done my best to provide new answers and solutions. Even if you are one of the more than 100,000 people who have read the first book cover to cover, I think you’ll find some great new information in Straw Bale Gardens Complete that will make your SBG experience even more productive and efficient. —Joel The Straw Bale Gardening Story II Everyone has heard it said that “necessity is the mother of invention,” and I must agree. It was just after graduating from college, and hours after buying my first house, that I discovered my new home was surrounded with construction fill. Instead of the fertile farmland I grew up on, I found only clay, gravel, rocks, and old bricks that had been graded, compacted, and frosted with an inch of “blackish” topsoil. Anyone with even a rudimentary working knowledge of growing plants could decipher the cards I’d been dealt. Planting anything in this “soil” would require a backhoe, a couple of months with a pick axe, and several truck-loads of good quality compost to amend the “concrete” into a state where it might actually produce something. Rescuing this soil would be very expensive, so for a young, new homeowner with college loans to pay, it wasn’t an option. The Author as a farmboy, working hard and dreaming up new ways of doing things. While I didn’t have much money, I did have a fresh Bachelor of Science in Horticulture degree from the University of Minnesota, as well as some distinct memories of growing up on a small farm. There, we always seemed to have a few broken bales of straw that would get piled up along the side of the barn. After a few months of decomposing, the biggest, greenest, healthiest thistles on the whole farm would spring up from these bales. I wondered, even as a young boy, why the healthiest looking weeds were always the ones growing out of these old bales, but as a recent horticulture student I now knew. In my exhaustive study of soils, composting, plant physiology, and all things horticulture, I found that most mysteries, including why weeds grow in bales, can be explained by science—microbial soil science, to be exact. The old bales, I deduced, were composting inside, creating brand new soil. This provided a phenomenal growing environment for weeds. So why, then, couldn’t I use bales of straw to grow vegetables? I decided to explore the question and I’ll say it again: “necessity is the mother of invention.” If I had been able to come up with $200 to build raised beds instead, you might well be reading a mystery novel right now, instead of this book called Straw Bale Gardens Complete. The system I now like to call “SBG” wasn’t an instant success, unless you consider 15 years of experimenting and perfecting a method to be instant success. It’s not as simple as it might seem to some onlookers and many would- be bale-gardeners who don’t bother to learn the right method. “Well, you just buy a bale of straw and dig out the inside and put in a little dirt and then drop in the plants,” they conclude, “and Shazam! You have a garden.” Not exactly. I’ve seen what happens when it’s done this way, and it’s a disaster. The plants starve to death and the dirt brings in weed seeds and disease we are trying to avoid. One of the test gardens in my own backyard. Over the years some of my neighbors may have wondered about my experiments, and it’s hard to blame them. The truth is that my method isn’t really very complicated. The simplicity of the method, and the foolproof techniques I’ve developed, make vegetable gardening about as simple as following a recipe for baking cookies. You can deviate a little bit here and there, but if you want to be successful, make sure you adhere to the basics, or you’ll end up with a garden that only disappoints. Because the straw bale generates heat as the straw decomposes, a Straw Bale Garden can get a head start in planting and yield ripe tomatoes weeks before the other gardens in town. Step One: Set aside the skepticism The fact is, growing vegetables in straw bales is a very radical idea to traditional gardeners and even folks who have tried other out-of-the-ground strategies, like container gardening and raised bed gardening. You naturally encounter some serious skepticism when you tell these people that you’ve invented a method serious skepticism when you tell these people that you’ve invented a method that: takes 75 percent less time; uses less water; involves less bending; requires less pesticide and no weeding; and, on top of that, can be done anywhere, even on a rooftop without using any soil at all. Then, add that it can be done on a shoestring budget, and you can’t blame them if it sounds too good to be true. “That’s impossible…vegetables require nutrients…nutrients are only available in the soil, so how can crops be as productive or as nutritious if they are not grown in the soil?” is a typical objection I hear. Once they listen to my explanation, read the book or hear my seminar, however, the skepticism subsides a bit. The real proof, though, is in the pudding. They need to try it for themselves, and this is where the real foundation of the Straw Bale Gardening movement has been built. Over the years I have told hundreds of audiences, “When you first put bales of straw in your yard, you are going to get some very funny looks!” But, I like to add, when you start a bale garden you will immediately become a teacher, and after a year or two you’ll transition into a preacher. You will have to answer questions, explain what you’re doing, and how this Straw Bale Gardening method actually works. Because they’ve never done it, many first-time Straw Balers are also skeptical. But if they follow the method they become convinced. Not every single seed will sprout, and not every single plant will thrive, but overall the garden will provide many great successes and yield even greater satisfaction and enjoyment. Even those who have never grown a single thing discover that they can have a wonderful garden. It isn’t necessary to grow a huge garden to be successful; I’ve seen many one-bale gardeners with smiles from cheek to cheek, even bragging a bit about their accomplishments. As more and more people have tried and succeeded with Straw Bale Gardening, the movement has grow–rapidly. It’s basically word-of-mouth advertising. Neighbors, friends, coworkers, and the random people who happen to strike up a conversation in line next to a successful Straw Bale Gardener, are seeing and hearing that it works and they decide to give it a try. Most find the simplicity to be appealing, and the no-weeding benefit gets a lot of attention, too. So does that fact that you can plant three or four weeks earlier in a bale than in the ground. But whatever reason draws the most interest, I’ve found that it’s not my evangelizing or even a book that has sold tens of thousands on the idea; it is simply those who have done it and are true “Bale-ievers” (my affectionate name for Straw Bale Gardening believers).