How to Build a Straw Bale Garden
June 28, 2016 7:05 PM   Subscribe

When I moved into my new Philadelphia rowhouse, I was determined to grow the vegetable garden that had eluded me all those years in a cramped Manhattan apartment. But reality struck with the first thrust of my shovel: my soil — a cocktail of concrete shards and construction debris mixed with a bit of sand and dirt — was useless. Faced with the expense (OK, and effort) of building raised beds, I decided instead to go cheap and easy: a straw bale garden.

Also: Grasping at Straw, A Foolproof vegetable plot (NYT article).

Joel Karsten is the straw bale garden guru. Here's his Straw Bale Garden Blog and the FAQs.
posted by storybored (25 comments total) 43 users marked this as a favorite
 
That's a really elegant bit of permaculture right there. I would love to give this a try.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:20 PM on June 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


The most amusing thing is that they have to explain what a "straw bale" (called a hay bale anywhere I've ever been) is. Do NYT readers really not know what a bale of hay is?
posted by anastasiav at 7:24 PM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]




Yeah, straw bales are only called hay bales (and vice versa) by city slickers. ;-)
posted by jferg at 7:34 PM on June 28, 2016 [7 favorites]


We just grow flowers in our garden next to our Pittsburgh townhouse because we just don't trust the soil for vegetables. Given our fair city's history of pollution and the fact that there was a paint factory around the corner for fifty years makes me too skittish to grow food here. The straw bale thing looks cool but would take more space than we have.
posted by octothorpe at 7:34 PM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


This looks like a great way to grow potatoes even if your soil is good.
posted by Camofrog at 7:37 PM on June 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


Camofrog - my Grandmother, who had a green thumb extraordinare, swore by simply laying her seed potatoes on the ground, and putting a thick mound of straw over the row. She would simply lift up the straw and pluck off a few potatoes, and lay it back down for more to grow.
posted by jferg at 7:47 PM on June 28, 2016 [8 favorites]


We just grow flowers in our garden next to our Pittsburgh townhouse because we just don't trust the soil for vegetables.

Brooklyn College will test your soil for cheap so you know what you're dealing with.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:03 PM on June 28, 2016 [3 favorites]


Any idea how well this will work in the tropics?
posted by destrius at 10:23 PM on June 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm another northeastern industrial city resident ( Albany, NY ) and yeah, I don't trust my 30x30 backyard either for edible crops. This is one of those "Eureka" things.
posted by mikelieman at 10:39 PM on June 28, 2016


Are straw bales way cheaper in the USA or something? Over here they are about $20 each. I could buy several tonnes of mushroom compost etc, which was enough to create raised beds to cover the whole backyard last year for less than $100 total, including delivery. I'm guessing I'd need at least 40 straw bales to cover the same area, which would be about $800.

I had a similar issue with recommendations to layer my raised beds with lucerne. That stuff is expensive!
posted by lollusc at 12:00 AM on June 29, 2016


Depends on where you are but $3-10 is reasonable for a larger bale if you're buying small amounts. I'm sure they're $25/ea if it's for permaculture though. Also straw isn't exactly inherently organic so I'm kind of leery of this method. It does work fine for a one year garden but I'd prefer to know where the straw came from.

Yeah, straw bales are only called hay bales (and vice versa) by city slickers. ;-)

And this is how half the urban chicken farmers I know nearly froze their chickens the first winter. Straw: insulating, hay: not insulating.
posted by fshgrl at 1:14 AM on June 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


Seconding destrius's question.
posted by bardophile at 4:43 AM on June 29, 2016


ryanshepard: "Brooklyn College will test your soil for cheap so you know what you're dealing with."

It'll just confirm what I already know. It's not a big deal, we like flowers and can pick up veggies at the farmers' market.
posted by octothorpe at 4:56 AM on June 29, 2016


Depends on where you are but $3-10 is reasonable for a larger bale if you're buying small amounts. I'm sure they're $25/ea if it's for permaculture though. Also straw isn't exactly inherently organic so I'm kind of leery of this method. It does work fine for a one year garden but I'd prefer to know where the straw came from.

So, my family produced hay, not straw, bales for decades on a small scale as a part time entrepreneur type thing. We're in the deep south by the way. Hay isnt hard to come by here, extreme drought excepted. All that said, knowing the benefits of straw for various construction/insulation modes, does anyone know if the supply exists down here to make obtaining and using it, both for small projects like this and for larger structure type uses, as practical, or nearly so, as it is elsewhere?
posted by RolandOfEld at 5:33 AM on June 29, 2016


Hay would compost much more quickly than straw as it has more nitrogen. I wouldn't do this if there was something else available cheaper. Mushroom compost, cottonseed hulls, pecan shells, it just depends where you are. Trucking is what costs.
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:41 AM on June 29, 2016


My first thought is, I want to try this in my little city yard next year! My second thought is, wait how does this not result in heaps of moldy straw? The blog addresses this but I am concerned. It must be my upbringing--as a kid I was responsible for tossing hay to my family's horses and cows, and moldy was to be spotted and disposed of away from the hungry faces of animals.
posted by esoterrica at 8:16 AM on June 29, 2016


I could buy several tonnes of mushroom compost etc, which was enough to create raised beds to cover the whole backyard last year for less than $100 total, including delivery. I'm guessing I'd need at least 40 straw bales to cover the same area, which would be about $800.

Everything costs more every time someone else touches it. Perhaps straw bales in your area don't come direct enough or in large enough quantities. Beyond that, I think if you are going to apples:apples this you need to consider what you paid in materials for the rest of those raised beds. Part of the appeal here is you plop the bale down and you're done. Having bought and lugged and assembled timbers I can see the appeal.

On the other hand, I am skeptical about what percentage of folks are going to be thrilled with this at the season's end when they have these partially composted bales coming apart in their yards. Seems likely to make a pretty big mess when compared to turning your beds.
posted by phearlez at 8:21 AM on June 29, 2016


Straw is basically hollow grass, like wheat stems. Hay is dried plant material, either alfalfa or blades of tall grass. It's easy to tell the difference. Does it look yellowish, and hollow like a drinking straw? Well then, it's straw. Does it look green? Then it's hay. Straw is scratchy, dusty, and slippery; hay is heavier, and generally more fragrant (like sun-dried grass clippings after mowing your lawn). Anyone who's had to feed an herbivorous farm animal can tell you that hay is for food, and straw is for bedding. But don't blame yourself for not knowing, because in general people don't do a good job differentiating between the two... for example when you go for a "hay ride" you're sitting on straw bales, because straw is cheap and the bales are generally lighter and easier to stack into a wagon...
posted by caution live frogs at 8:43 AM on June 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've done this for rootcrops when we lived somewhere that had rocky soil. It works OK; but does leave a soggy, heavy, partially decomposed falling apart bale at year end. (Equals good start to compost)

Use straw or you risk all sorts of seeds sprouting from hay bales.
posted by mightshould at 9:36 AM on June 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


There is straw anywhere people grown grain, it's just the left over stems. Most in the US is wheat straw but you can get barley straw, oat straw etc. It runs about $165/ton base price in bulk and just add shipping and handling to that if you don't live near a grain farmer. As always it's cheapest if you pick it up from the farm and most expensive if you have it delivered in small amounts. To get a semi load delivered is pretty reasonable, farms do it all the time.

After your straw bale garden is done you just cut the strings on the bales and spread it out for soil. You generally need to add some amendments for good soil, straw alone will be slow to decompose and acidic.

It works extremely well in the very hot parts of CA so I'm sure it'd work fine in the tropics. Straw bale gardens don't work well in colder areas

One fun thing they don't mention is that damp bales can spontaneously combust. Usually this happens with hay not straw and if it's wet enough it won't but I've definitely seen wet bales of straw smoldering and had them be full of ash when cut open.
posted by fshgrl at 9:43 AM on June 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


We tried this one year, and discovered that non-organic straw can have some very nasty leftover herbicides in it - nothing grew, and we had to put the straw in the yard waste.
Hay is another story - it is frequently 'ensiled' in plastic so that it can ferment, after which it becomes more nutritious for the cows/horses that eat it. Hay would also be a Bad Thing to use in a chicken coop or for growing...
posted by dbmcd at 12:06 PM on June 29, 2016


No no no. Fermented hay will kill horses stone dead. That's for cattle. Horses are hind gut fermenters not ruminants. Please never feed silage to horses!!! You can sometimes feed the hayage plastic wrapped hay but it must be the horse specific type. You will know by the price :) In general cattle hay is much lower quality and cheaper than horse hay, often it's been rained on or is a little old or weedy.

But hay also tends to be treated with herbicides and pesticides, albeit far far less than wheat. Most organic grain farmers plow the straw back in so it's hard to find organic straw.
posted by fshgrl at 12:31 PM on June 29, 2016


Instead of all those buckets and buckets of fertilizer, can I use my city's compost?
posted by Galaxor Nebulon at 1:36 PM on June 30, 2016


Free compost or free mulch? If there's actually some sort of compost offering that's one thing, but here they just chip every single crappy thing picked up by yard waste collections and offer it as mulch. So it's totally full of grass seed at the most benign, as well as potentially full of poison ivy and other nasty stuff.
posted by phearlez at 2:24 PM on June 30, 2016


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