KMO with his new straw bale garden.
Instead of producing our own podcast this week, I had the honor of being on C-Realm Radio in Vermont, hosted by my favorite podcaster (and, as of last month, radio host) KMO. The topic is straw bale gardening. KMO talks first to straw bale garden expert Joel Karsten. Then I chime in enthusiastically on the topic. I’m followed by gardener and artist Lauren Blair. We’re all sort of an opening act for an entertaining 1990s era recording of Terrance McKenna thoughtstyling about “linguistic objects”.
One interesting point that Karsten raises is the issue of persistent herbicides in straw bales. He says its not a problem to worry about. I suggest doing an bioassay to rule out the possibility so, in a way, we contradict each other. Karsten may be right, but I need to do some more research on the subject. If any of you know if persistent herbicides, such as Clopyralid, Aminopyralid, Aminocyclopyrachlor and Picloram, are still an issue for gardeners, please let me know in the comments.
Great to hear you talking on C-REALM Radio about straw bale gardening (in Vermont) from LA.
I don’t personally know much about the pesticides in the straw, but I do know the composting company that used to process the municipal stream would not accept straw or stall cleanouts, etc.
When I asked them while on a tour, they said it was because there were residual pesticides left on the straw that wouldn’t compost, and since they were OMRI listed, they wouldn’t take it. Obviously, I’m sure some still got into the stream since the mass of people don’t give a shit about what they put into their carts, but they didn’t compost the straw from larger farms and commercial clients, and it went to separate digester program.
How much truth that was I don’t know, but I personally stopped using straw for mulching.