Straw Bale Gardens

Tutorial On How To Make From Scratch, The Straw Bale Method

A few days ago I went to visit a friend who is helping out on a newly forming permaculture farm not far from Hamar in Norway. This time there was a big group of people who went for the weekend to help out up there and I met some really nice people. One of the goals was to turn a huge ball of straw into seperate blocks which are then placed where you want them and suddenly transform into firstly a raised bed, secondly a huge water holder and lastly a "self made compost".

If you haven't heard of this principle then here is a good image of what it looks like. I will use for this post pictures from Gardeners.com as we were only making the bales at this time and so I don't have any of my own photos to use.

I like this website because they go "all out" on it, so go check it out to see the extreme versions of this great method of gardening.

The basics though are so easy. Its especially perfect if you have bad soil and don't want to break your back by digging and turning soil for hours on end. No thanks! And like this place where I am at the moment , it has NO soil. Its rock-bed. Since the term "no dig" garden has been formed, I really don't see why people are still digging up gardens. I was and most likely still will try pallet gardening here, but still that involves using some soil, which would mean a lot of physical work and would be crazy. I just started seeing a chiropractor to fix my back from doing hard physical work, so im retired now from lifting heavy stuff!

To carry up Straw of any amount, is much lighter than to carry up soil that's for sure!

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The First Step.

At the weekend we first had to make the straw bales. We had a book - "The" Book.. No, Not the Bible! It was a book on straw bale gardening. When I arrived it was already set up to make the bales and it was by using the traditional method and they even had made the "contraption" as shown in the book. This (Left) is the one from the farm. I had to draw around it as wood is the same colour as straw! The idea is that you pack straw flat into that black tub there which creates the shape, then place that on the board you can see which is under a press. Before this though you must prepare the string used to tie the bale up with otherwise you cant get it on any other way.

Here's my first ever Straw bale!

At 19.00 when the sun was bearable and with the weight of the biggest viking man I have ever seen in my life on the part you pull down on, a glorious straw bail was made for growing nice food in. It took literally 5 mins to do and I even had enough time to realised that there was a huge one already there at the end of the original straw ball which just needed string around it. It was huge! very efficient.

The Next Things To Do..

• You must added Nitrogen. There is quite a bit of speculation as too how much you should add, I personally would either add feathers, hair and crumbs of animal horns into the straw and a nice thick layer of top soil on the bale which you need anyway. You must also soak the bale wet until its dripping out from the bottom. This will firstly hold water to feed what your growing, and also inside the straw mass will start to compost and being moist helps a lot.

• Put the bale (if not already) where you want it to stay. Then as seen in the picture (Below) you can either cut out a bowl shape and add soil (if your using small plants) or you can add directly on-top, a layer of soil. This is ready now for seeds to be placed in.

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There are many things you can do with these, imagine you have 50 of them?!

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I would like to see other peoples older straw bale garden's that have been running a while already :)

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