Straw Bale Garden - The beginning, sort of... April 4, 2015
It's actually Monday, April 27th as I write this but I want to try to re-capture the time between the delivery of our bales to today and then maybe even keep up! :-)
I'm not exactly sure when I/we decided to do the straw bale garden this year. I started to plan and was browsing and came across the information about SBG and I was hooked from the get-go. I discussed it with John and he was on board right away too. I ordered the book and started contemplating and discussing where we could set the bales up and how many. Would we do strictly bales or would we proceed with building some of the corrugated beds as well as the bales? Honestly, due to time and energy restrictions we opted just to give the bales our best shot in hopes that what is really a LARGE experiment would turn out to be truly more productive than we've ever achieved. We'll see.
I checked Craig's List for local farmers who supply straw bales and landed on a couple that were very friendly and worked with me well. "Chad, the straw guy", delivered 35 bales on a Saturday morning. The Saturday morning I was bed-bound because of my back. Yep, plan a garden, throw your body into painful spasms. Not my plan. And as it turns out it was not my back after all but rather a hip and I'll just save that story for another day, but suffice it to say I was very worried that my gardening season was going down in flames before it ever got started. I'm thrilled to report that I recovered very quickly and was back in the fresh air in no time. The bales sat for the week. Josh was sweet enough to carry all of them from the front driveway (the driveway of the long-vacant house next door actually) to the back yard and stack them nicely where I directed.
John took Friday, the 10th off from work and we were hard at it. Travis even stopped by and immediately volunteered to pitch in - pitch in BIG. Man those guys can work! Rachel even helped some. Once we got started setting the bales up and driving t-poles the family got interested and started checking it out and asking questions. This seemed like something they could get excited about. Well, excited might be a strong word - but something like excited, but not... I digress...
This is the set up
Borrowed space from our neighborhood common ground with permission from the HOA President. As long as we don't erect anything permanent we're good to go. The bales, as it turns out, are actually the perfect solution. We are able to expand and use a lot of space that is otherwise wasted, and when the bales have been used to their limit - about 2 years so I've read - we just break them apart, spread them and use them to help make the ground even better for the next garden season - simply adding new bales atop the nicely straw mulched ground. Nothing left behind permanent and only beneficial to the land.
In an effort to catch up the rest of the work...
In addition to the bales and in the days following:
To be continued...
I'm not exactly sure when I/we decided to do the straw bale garden this year. I started to plan and was browsing and came across the information about SBG and I was hooked from the get-go. I discussed it with John and he was on board right away too. I ordered the book and started contemplating and discussing where we could set the bales up and how many. Would we do strictly bales or would we proceed with building some of the corrugated beds as well as the bales? Honestly, due to time and energy restrictions we opted just to give the bales our best shot in hopes that what is really a LARGE experiment would turn out to be truly more productive than we've ever achieved. We'll see.
I checked Craig's List for local farmers who supply straw bales and landed on a couple that were very friendly and worked with me well. "Chad, the straw guy", delivered 35 bales on a Saturday morning. The Saturday morning I was bed-bound because of my back. Yep, plan a garden, throw your body into painful spasms. Not my plan. And as it turns out it was not my back after all but rather a hip and I'll just save that story for another day, but suffice it to say I was very worried that my gardening season was going down in flames before it ever got started. I'm thrilled to report that I recovered very quickly and was back in the fresh air in no time. The bales sat for the week. Josh was sweet enough to carry all of them from the front driveway (the driveway of the long-vacant house next door actually) to the back yard and stack them nicely where I directed.
John took Friday, the 10th off from work and we were hard at it. Travis even stopped by and immediately volunteered to pitch in - pitch in BIG. Man those guys can work! Rachel even helped some. Once we got started setting the bales up and driving t-poles the family got interested and started checking it out and asking questions. This seemed like something they could get excited about. Well, excited might be a strong word - but something like excited, but not... I digress...
This is the set up
Borrowed space from our neighborhood common ground with permission from the HOA President. As long as we don't erect anything permanent we're good to go. The bales, as it turns out, are actually the perfect solution. We are able to expand and use a lot of space that is otherwise wasted, and when the bales have been used to their limit - about 2 years so I've read - we just break them apart, spread them and use them to help make the ground even better for the next garden season - simply adding new bales atop the nicely straw mulched ground. Nothing left behind permanent and only beneficial to the land.
In an effort to catch up the rest of the work...
In addition to the bales and in the days following:
- Pruned the Bradford Pear and the apple trees that were infected with Fire Blight. We are working with Tee Time Lawn Care to try to save these trees. They sprayed, we pruned, they came back and sprayed again. Steve is taking good care of us. Friendly, professional and helpful.
- Pruned blackberry bushes - finally. They've never been pruned :-( Wow, what a difference it makes. Replaced the wire fencing with two single wire trellis system. Much neater. Cleaned up the area around and mowed down the weeds.
- Tore down most of the old existing raised beds. Trying to make space to espalier the fruit trees and to set up the SWING SET!!
- Cleaned up herb beds near basement doors and started the "Baby Garden". I moved Emily's stone and the other smaller stones to that area and started making plans for how I want that to look and feel. The shade garden just didn't seem to do as well as I'd like.
To be continued...
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