Anything other than a tree or a bush can be grown on a bale. Plants that produce their edible sections above ground are easy. Thus peas and beans, cabbages, salad crops,pumpkins,and marrows for example are prime candidates for straw bale cultivation. Sweet corn will send its long root down into the depths of the bale to absorb nutrients. Onions and leeks also root shallowly and produce near crops to the surface, so there are no problems. Potatoes, parsnips and carrots,all root vegetables, can also be grown, for they are able to push down into the decaying straw. However,if you grow members of the Brassica family [cabbages, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, sprouts calabrese,turnips] you will need to add some lime, as this family requires a pH higher than other vegetables do, so if you do want to grow a range of vegetables,different straw bales for vegetables with difering requirements might be a good idea.
Some plants require staking, such as beans, and this can cause a problem, as stakes cannot be easily driven into a straw bale. The solution can be to fix stakes into the ground near the bale and fix the plants to them. This is likely to be the case with beans, peas and marrows. If the ground is too hard placing the bale near a mesh fence allows the plants to be tied to the fence
Certain vegetables are greedy feeders, such as pumpkins,so they will need a large dose of fertilizer. But the up-side of this is that members of the pumpkin family are well suited to straw bale cultivation. One large pumpkin per bale can be quite a nice little project that can allow you to specialize with different plants for different bales.
Herbs and salads can have the soil spread a few centimetres deep across the top of the bale, and these two kinds of easy-to grow-vegetables will happily thrive. However, some, especially root crops, will benefit from a small compost filled hole specially dug out of the straw surface into which the seedling can grow. Potatoes, especially,require some depth of soil and an application of manure,or failing that potato fertilizer. The manure applied can be in the form of liquid manure or pelleted manure, which can be purchased from garden centres and a variety of other outlets. Compost can also be liquidized and applied to the bale.
Comments
Indeed, I am not tall enough for most things.
All members of the cucurbit family, to which squash and cucumber belong, are greedy feeders, so your soil might not have been fertile enough for them. They suck up water, and it is a known problem of container growing that containers and raised beds are prone to drying out quicker than soil does. You certainly could grow a squash in a straw bale, but be careful of the weight. I would roll the bale down your back path before you place it, or better still use some kind of trolley. You are not big enough to shift a bale. Nowadays, with my back being as it is, I would ask Andrew for help if I wanted to lift one.
I would soak the bale in liquid seaweed solution and also liquid fertilizer on several occasions during the growth period.
I haven't used straw bales. What a good idea. I often use containers to grow veg and have been fairly successful. My rhubarb, tomatoes and courgettes( zucchini ) do well ; but my cucumber and butternut squash didn't. Maybe straw bales would help these.
Iam glad that you liked it, Margielynn.
This is awesome, I have never heard of this before! Thanks for sharing, great page!
Problems with container gardening can be due to water. Containers dry out and as you are in a hot state, Texas, maybe you are not watering enough. But it is possible to flood a container with over-watering. You also need to provide enough food, as containers can become depleted in nutrients. To do this you can add compost or fertilizer and water it in. I use containers in my greenhouse and have successfully applied pelleted chicken manure and seaweed meal and then watering in. Sometimes I apply liquid feed, such as tomato feed or liquid seaweed. This is applied diluted in water.
If you have plants in containers for over a few years, ensure that they do not become rootbound, which is when the roots expand to the edge of the container and begin to grow in a circle. The plant is then trapped and can only thrive again when it is placed in a larger container.
Also plants that have grown too large can sometimes be divided to enable them to thrive again. This technique works with some plants, but not all, so ask advice for a specific plant. Take out the plant and using two garden forks lever the rootball so that it splits into two. Then replant each half in different pots. This technique renews the plant's vigour. I use it every five years with my rhubarb.
I learned something new today, thank you for your very interesting article! I do. Container planting and it has not been very successful!
Good. I am glad to have been of assistance.
You introduced me to a new "container" type of gardening. I live in a condo and what soil I do have is sandy so this might work for me. Thanks
In response to your question, soil can be spread over the surface, but unless the sides have some protection against soil falling off the situation can become messy, and to get sufficient depth of soil for some vegetables requires holes.