Straw Bale Garden Tour Part II

In this video we take a tour of our straw bale garden as it appears this week. The vegetables varieties you see growing are Tromboncino squash, Lunga di Napoli squash (growing up into a native bush), Matt’s Wild Cherry tomato, Celebrity tomato, eggplant and Swiss chard. And just to take down my smugness a notch I also included a shot of an unsuccessful cucumber plant. Other than the cucumber, though, this is one of the most productive vegetable gardens I’ve ever planted. I’m now a big fan of the straw bale method.

The music is by Karaoke Mouse–“Shanghai Reggae.”

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6 Comments

  1. Looks wonderful and very inspirational. Now I want to try it! It has been so nice to see the progress and the challenges. Is that the squash you were concerned about? If so then it looks like it just kept on going and produced despite the powdery mildew.

  2. Wow!

    hasnt that come on……
    Im really looking into this method when I move back to my property which is on volcanic rockbed and sandy soil. I feel this is the better solution for me rather than building a stack of raised bed structures.
    I watched another video after yours of a strawbale workshop where they create a window formation of bales held together with gopher wire.
    This is the method I will use.
    We dont have gophers thank goodness but we do have wallabies possums and native mice to contend with. If I use this method Ill be able to inves the money that I was going to put into building the beds into a better fencing system.

    thanks to you for putting me onto this system.

    Cheers
    Helenb

  3. This is my first year gardening with straw bales. Overall, I give it a two thumbs up! The only down side, and it is a considerable one, is that the straw bales I put out and planted this spring are crumbling to bits now in August. This is especially discouraging because the eggplant and peppers are at their production peak. I’m propping them up as best I can with stakes, but the stakes have little purchase in the fluffy, sinking bales. Next year, I’ll try to find sturdy poles long enough to drive, not just into the bale, but into the ground. The accelerated decomposition may to due to the very abnormal weather we in the Southeastern US have experienced this year: quite wet, and cool by our standards.

  4. Awesome!

    Seriously looks like a great place to stick in some Stropharia mushrooms too. I’ll bet that environment would be great for them.

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