Picked straw bale gardening over raised beds this spring

I went with straw bales instead of lumber because I didn't want to drop $200 on cedar. So far my zucchini is going crazy and the bales are holding up fine, but has anyone had trouble with them falling apart by midsummer?

3 comments

3 Comments

val9495d ago

Mine lasted until late July before they started really collapsing, but by then the plants were established enough it didn't matter. I just piled extra straw around the sides to keep everything together.

mitchell.lee4d ago

Has anyone tried putting cardboard under their bales to slow down the rotting from the ground up? @val949 mentioned piling straw around the sides which helps, but I found that moisture coming from underneath was what really killed mine by August. I ended up switching to a layer of gravel under my next batch and they stayed solid way longer.

kim.zara5d ago

Funny you mention that, because my neighbor was doing straw bales and his collapsed in early August (total mess, plants everywhere). But @val949 is totally right about piling extra straw around the sides - I did that when mine started sagging and it bought me a good extra month. I also noticed that if you water too much from the top, the bales rot faster, so I switched to a soaker hose laid right on the straw surface. My tomatoes actually did better in the bales than in the ground, they were like 7 feet tall by September.