I mentioned that I wanted a raised bed garden a few weeks back. My challenge was setting them up due to cost and renting. Our landlords are good, but I still don't want to make such a major change in the yard. I contemplated a garden all set in containers, but still wasn't really what I wanted. After much thought I decided to just use my small flower bed out front. While researching something for that I came across something called straw bale gardening.
It's literally using a bale of straw to grow plants. Ideal for renting as the bales only last 1-2 years, but then break down naturally into compost, and they are a raised bed thats higher then my initial thoughts!
On Saturday I bought 2 straw bales and started the prep work. Which basically consists of wetting them thoroughly and waiting for the initial heating up to occur and calm down. Takes 10 days and then I can plant the cucumbers and watermelons and hope that I get the results I want. My only concern is that the location may not be the best for the access to sun. Not helped with the cloudy day we had on Saturday so I had to make my best guess. We have a good sized field/lawn in back of the house that gets full sun all day, but again.. I don't want to just plop straw bales down without their ok. I'm seriuously contemplating getting a third bale for an herb garden. If this works I can see an addiction starting and more. What reading I did also said that you can even grow onions or potatoes in them.
I'll take pics as this grows (yep.. fully pun intended, lol).. later today or tomorrow I'll post a fascinating picture of 2 wet straw bales, lol
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