Garden Site

I finally got out to take pictures of my future garden spot. This is behind our house, and unfortunately there are some trees near by, but it gets a good amount of sun each day. It is also about as close as to house, and the only water source, as we can without putting it in the middle of the yard. Even then we have more interfering trees.

You can see where my past attempt at a garden sits. Those are some landscape timbers that I will have to move this spring. As well as some other junk. My raised bed started to fall apart after one year. Obviously I didn't have it supported it enough, evidence of my lack of carpentry skills.

Here is the heart of my future garden, the bales! You can only see eight of the bales, but in the pen is another four. Each bale can take two tomato, egg plant, or pepper plants. Cucumber, zucchini, or summer squash plants can be planted four to a bale. Two plants can be planted back to back one trailing over the left side, the other over the right. I am going to try to get two bigger squash plants: watermelon and pumpkin. As it is now, I may need to get a few more bales in the spring.

I sat down the other day to plan what I wanted to plant. It ended up being quite a list and I found a few things I don't think will work well in the bales. Tomatoes and other climbing plants can be stakes some what, but will end up going over the edge of the bale. I want sugar snap peas that I will have to make a tresses of some type for, but I am going to try them in the bale. I am thinking about how I want to do that. Some things like rhubarb, that is a perennial, can not be put into bales. Other things that will get too large would fall over.

My list for the bales so far:
Three kinds of tomatoes: 3-6 plants
Green Peppers: 2 plants
Other Peppers: 2 plants
Slicing Cucumbers: 2 plants
Pickling Cucumbers: 2 plants
Zucchini: 2 plants
Yellow Squash: 2 plants
Eggplant: 2 plants
Small Watermelons: 2 plants
Baking Pumpkins: 2 plants
Sugar Snap Peas: 14 plants ( I am hoping that fits in two bales)

I am thinking to planting the sides of the bale with herbs. I have not decided what I will plant there. Maybe some flowers too that go well with veggie gardens, like marigolds.

Setting up shop

Well if you visited my first post yesterday you noticed that my blog was pretty sparse. I have a done a lot more research today. You will see at the right that I have blogs and sites that I hope to glean information from. The blogs are related either to straw bale gardens or regional gardens. I also like to focus on organic and sustainable practices. I have two categories of links. Those for straw bale gardens and another for vegetables. Most of the straw bale sites say just about the same thing. There are minor differences and I will be contemplating how to integrate them all into the methods that will use.

As I have a few months to go before I can actually get to the good part of gardening, I will be spacing out my post, so don't be surprised if I don't post everyday. I am shooting for once a week.

Welcome!!

Welcome to my new experiment. I am not a very good gardener, my sister is an excellent one and I have always been jealous of her green thumb. I keep trying but I have lots of weeds or squash beetles, or forget to water. Not this year, this year I am going to make a straw bale garden.

The idea behind a straw bale garden is that you take straw bales and can configure them almost anyway you want. You can plant along side a driveway, in the corner of your yard or any little space because there is no need to dig. Except for the occasional sprouting of grain from the bale itself, there are much fewer bothersome weeds. Some even report that they have fewer problems with pests and diseases. Also there is a lot less bending over. I do think they may need more watering, not my strong suit but I am going to give a whirl.

I got the idea when on the Friday 1/15/2010 11:00 AM addition of Wisconsin Public Radio's Garden Talk a woman called in about a straw bale garden, actually I think she used hay bales but most of the places I have visited suggest straw. If you want to listen to her snippet skip ahead to 28:30. I thought about all the bales I have just sitting around right now as wind blocks for my goats. I can use those!

The difference between hay and straw is just enough that I highly suggest looking for straw. Hay is the entire plant dried and is fed to horses, cows, goats, sheep, llama, etc. Since hay is the entire plant it includes the seeds. Straw is just the dried steams of the oat or wheat plant. The grain head and leaves have been removed. Straw is often used as mulch and bedding for the above animals. Straw is the better choice for a straw bale garden due to the fact it doesn't have seeds, or not as many.

So far I have my space picked out, I have the bales, and here in Wisconsin I have about 3 1/2 months left of winter. Plenty of time to research this more and starting looking through all those seed catalogs that have been coming in the mail.