Straw Bale Gardening – http://planterspost.com/strawbale Maybe you are about to start the gardening season and have your old straw bales left over from last year.
So what do you do with them? Well here are some old depleted straw bales from my garden last year, and as you can see they have passed their sell by date – or have they?
The fact is that these old bales have in fact still got another year or two in them, if you know how to take advantage of their current state. You see these old bales are now well on their way to becoming compost, and with proper care will still give you excellent growing results.
When straw bales get to this state you have 2 options open to you. One is to recycle them by adding them to the compost heap, and the other way is to frame them like so…
Here I have simply made a wooden frame to fit around the bale, with timber I had in my shed. The gaps in the sides help with the composting process – though you could line them with garden liner if you wanted to.
I’ll simply add lots of water to get them back in condition with a water-nitrogen fertilizer to get them primed, cover with a layer of topsoil mix – then plant my tomato plants.
This means that I will spin out these used bales for another 2 years just adding compost as they rot down into the frame.
This is another larger frame just to show you how they can be converted into a raised bed garden. This already has a few bales added. Another bale will fill it in, then I can cap it all with compost and grow my brassicas!
So if you have used a straw bale garden last year, you might well consider re-using them in a straw bale garden frame!
Alternatively of course you could add them to the compost pile – either way your bales will still profit you with more crops!
Need more info? Check out my books and blog on straw bale gardening…
http://planterspost.com/strawbale
http://planterspost.com/rscombo
Play vid again: https://youtu.be/b-wyxKiRGkM
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#strawbales
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#growinginstraw
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