Starting Your Straw Bale Garden

So much has already been written about using straw bales as a medium for vegetable gardening,  that you will have no trouble finding information about how to create a straw bale garden.  

The purpose of this blog article is not to teach you how to create a straw bale garden, but to let you know that if you're thinking about it, now is the time to start!  It takes at least six weeks to condition bales to get them ready for planting, so you must to start the process six weeks before you hope to put plants into the bale. The time to do that, is now!

 

The basic idea of straw bale gardening technique is that you set a bale of straw (not hay) upright, with the cut side facing the sky.  Ideally, the bales will be braced to keep them from falling over, and they will also be equipped with soaker hoses so that plants grown in the bales are easily watered. Then, nitrogen fertilizer is applied and soaked through the bale. The nitrogen super-stimulates good bacteria that make the interior of the bale decompose and turn into mulch that plants can grow in.  Nitrogen is applied just about every other day during a six week process of rapidly composting the internal part of the bale.

The original straw bale gardening book was written by Joel Karsten. If you are interested in straw bale gardening, check out one of the several books he has written about it. Another book I like is called Straw Bales For Dummies. 

 (This photo from my home garden last spring shows one row of bales that has already been used for one growing season, and a second row of bales that is newly placed and ready for conditioning.)

Straw bale gardening offers significant benefit for the small scale, urban or suburban vegetable gardener. For one, you don't have to prepare soil, hoe, or till. You don't even need dirt! (You can set the bale directly on a patio!) It also offers automatic weed-free space. A third, fine benefit is that it automatically creates a raised gardening space, so that not nearly as much bending is required to cultivate your plants. (The main drawback is probably cost of materials, which you can learn more about in the books above.) 

Straw bales do not last forever. They continue to decompose and, over time, become clumps of mulch. Here is a photo taken this week of what is left of the straw bales shown in the illustration above. As you can see, there is nothing left! However, the remains of the bales do contain lots of earthworms and hummus and greatly improved the soil from the pure sand that was there last year.

 

It is time to be putting seeds into flats for spring planting, and it is time to be getting your bales ready to receive those little baby plants! Here is a photo of some bales currently being conditioned in another part of my garden: 

 

Happy gardening, everyone! 

100th Anniversary INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

On January 21, 2017, the world saw a taste of the potential power women wield through nonviolent protest, a power that continues to be exerted as women come to realize the extent to which the agenda in Washington, D.C. does not reflect their interest.

This was not the first time women have instigated change through nonviolent revolt. In fact, this year is the 100th anniversary of the demonstration that brought down the Czarist Empire of Russia.

According to Wikipedia, "In 1917 demonstrations marking International Women's Day in Saint Petersburg on the last Thursday in February (which fell on March 8 on the Gregorian calendar) initiated the February Revolution.[2] Women in Saint Petersburg went on strike that day for "Bread and Peace" – demanding the end of World War I, an end to Russian food shortages, and the end of czarism.[4] Leon Trotsky wrote, "23 February (8th March) was International Woman's Day and meetings and actions were foreseen. But we did not imagine that this 'Women's Day' would inaugurate the revolution. Revolutionary actions were foreseen but without date. But in morning, despite the orders to the contrary, textile workers left their work in several factories and sent delegates to ask for support of the strike… which led to mass strike... all went out into the streets."[4]

For all the women who think that there's no longer a need for International Women's Day, I'd like you to consider something:  If an average woman and an average man with exactly the same skill started working at exactly the same job on January 1, 2016, the woman still, as of today, would not have been paid as much as the man had been paid as of the last day of December, 2016.  Nope.  In 2017, equal pay day is April 4, 2017.   

Now, consider the photo below:  That's what a woman did in her efforts to secure  YOUR right to vote. 

In my line of work, what we see is that abused women often lose custody of their children. (See https://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/pas/dv.html ) 

 

On the positive side, women bring tremendous insight, value, and diverse approaches to governance and management. Countries and businesses that have more women in leadership DO BETTER than those without diversity.  (See  http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/12/08/companies_with_women_on_their_boards_do_better_and_not_just_because_they.html ).    

My question for women and for the men who love them is, what will you do for the women who follow in YOUR footsteps?  International Women's Day gives you one day during the year to think just a bit about that.