My Straw Bale Garden

Bales mostly set up

2010-05-15T17:56:00.001-07:00

I meant to have this done by now but the April showers have come in May this year! So I finally got out there and started pulling out the bales. Some were light but a lot more were really heavy as they already were wet. Some even have some mold on them. I am hoping that won't be bad.
Speaking of April Showers, she and May Flowers have a day pen by the garden so I let them out to do some weeding. I am not sure what to do with the spot where April is in this shot. It was the old "raised bed," in quotes because it didn't stay very raised and fell apart. But I have a huge mound of dirt there. Since I hate to buy dirt, it just seems wrong to me. I was thinking of mixing that with some very old compost to use in all those garden boxes dear ol' mom got.
I should have done this first, but I never do things in the right order. I want to put down news paper between the rows and then cover it with straw. I have lots of extra straw. That will be the next project.
See how much help April and May are being?
I guess May thought it was a lot of hard too!

Oh Mother!

2010-05-12T16:42:00.000-07:00

I love my mom I really do, but when the UPS man pulled up and dropped off two big boxes I rolled my eyes. I don't making it widely known, but a few years back I moved back in with my mom after she went through a divorce and a number of surgeries. It was much easier to just move in than travel back and forth. Now she has other issues that make it difficult for her to live alone, so I have stuck around to help. Anyway, that is completely beside the point, back to the boxes.

Inside the two big boxes are Garden Patch Grow Boxes. They look like this:

The best deal of course was to get 10. 10!?! Yup my lovely mother got 10 of them. Ugg, according to the website that is enough for a 300 sq foot garden in only a 10’ x 4’ space! That really is enough for an entire new garden. We are going to be doing some preserving this year I think if all goes well.

I have decided to use this as a time to do an experiment though. I am going to plant some veggies in the Grow Boxes and the exact same type of veggie in the bales. See which grows better.

I thought that some vining veggies, like cucumbers, gourds and squashes might due well if I trail them off the deck. That might actually work really well.

I started to move the bales, but some are really heavy. My little mini couldn't quite pull the sled when the bale was in there so I am going to have to rethink moving them. I may not be able to do it with horse power, I might have to use a deer ( John Deere of course).

Exciting seeds

2010-05-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

First of all I have very sad news. Those 4 ducks were attacked by a red fox during the morning about two weeks ago. Daphne was injured but is still alive and doing well. She follows me around the yard quacking and likes to be pet. The three ducklings did not make it. That darn fox also got my silkie hen also. Trust me I was mad, this was not over night but in morning. Before 10, but no really early. I chased him (her?) but he must have come back.

I do have three more duckling, east Indies call ducks. I have also added some chickens. A black Australorp hen and rooster and I have some mixed marans chicks in the brooder. We are taking measures to keep these guys safer.

I love to have both my chickens and my ducks around. Obviously chickens give me eggs and cut down on the insect population. Duck eggs are supposed to be really good for baking, although I admit that most of my duck eggs go to the dogs. They love them. I just adore having my quacking bunch around. Up and down the yard the ducks march, rooting out slugs and making holes in puddles of water. My three ducklings are very flighty, I am hoping that Daphne will calm them down.

I am in the midst of getting my bales in order. Ike will be helping me with that matter.

Lisa, a friend at Laughing Orca Ranch, sent me something really exciting. To read what all I got and why see my horse blog, Fearless Riding. What applies to this blog are these seeds from Home Town Seeds. I got tomato, swiss chard and butternut squash. Why I am so excited about these seeds is because they are Survival Seeds.

Survival seeds have been selected for some very specific criteria. First of they are non hybrid seeds. Hybrid seeds will not be true to the type if you plant the seeds produced by the fruits of them. A lot of the seeds that we plant are hybrid, if you plant the seeds of a hybrid you will not get a plant like the parent. Survival seeds are also not genetically modified. We are not quite sure how genetically modified food will effect us or our environment. So I am really excited to see how these plants do.

I love tomatoes and butternut squash, but swiss chard is going to be altogether new for me. I am so excited to learn how to prepare it!

BIG thanks to Lisa from Laughing Orca Ranch!

Ducklings update

2010-04-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

They are growing like weeds!

They have adopted Penelope as their mama, or at least their flock mate.

Woo Hoo . . . spring is here

2010-04-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

I have been busy with other things and I have not been posting. Shame on me. I have some tomatoes started, I will buy some early girls and better boys later.

I started getting the site ready. I moved the tarp and the weeds are really bad. I don't want to mow back there as there is wood and rocks that are hard to see. So I am using an alternative mowing method.
April:
Mazie:
Lily
Cheyenne:
Unfortunately they like all animals, quick changes in their diet is not good for their tummy so they each went out in pairs for 30 min. I'll do the same thing tomorrow and hopefully for the rest of the week I can get this area trimmed down. I have to put the bales out by May 1 so I can water for 10 days before I start planting. Planting date here is Wisconsin is usually May 15.

Goats

2010-03-23T07:17:00.001-07:00

My little lily.

DUCKLINGS

2010-03-19T06:58:00.001-07:00

Making Raisins

2010-03-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

I have decided that this blog will be about how I am trying to make, grow, or otherwise procure food. One of the things that has been frustrating me is that I throw away good. Frustrates me to no end. Yet I am trying to eat right and as I make new habits to eat more fruits and veggies I find that I sometimes let food get too old to eat. Now apples and veggies that get a little spongy can be cooked. They are great for adding to dishes.

Grapes are another matter. I don't normally cook grapes. So today before I threw out some grapes that were obviously past their prime I looked up on the handy dandy internet how to dehydrate grapes. I actually happen to have a dehydrator laying around so I pulled it. Washed the grapes and popped them in! Here is the site I found very helpful ---> dehydrate fruit

Now I just have to wait. One site siad that fruit that is dehydrating can take anywhere from 4-24 hours. I'll post the pictures back here of the raisins. Here are the grapes!

The fertilizers

2010-03-13T14:31:00.001-08:00

I don't understand buying fertilizer. Just doesn't make sense to me, not with so many fertilizer produces here. I prefer to use what I have. So here are some of my fertilizer producers:

Here is Abby. She is an 8 year old percheron cross mare. She is 16.1 hh and about 1500 lbs. She produces a lot of manure.

Ike and Madison. These two are miniature horses. They don't do as well as Abby, but they do the best they can.

Cheyenne is my representative of the goat herd. She is a pygmy goat, all her herd mates are Nigerians.

And the flock that is on bug patrol., Well not in this photo obviously but will be come spring.

Sunday Stills

2010-02-28T10:00:00.001-08:00

I am going to try some Sunday Stills. I hope I am doing this correctly. It looks like I just have to take some stills based on a topic. This week fruit.

Merit Badge Post: What’s Your Beef?

2010-02-27T06:38:00.000-08:00

Mary Jane's Farm is a awesome magazine on organic country living. Mary Jane Butter's started the magazine and then started a chat room for like minded women to exchange ideas on living a more simple life. What grew out of all that was the the Farm Girl Sisterhood. My mom and I joined the sisterhood for kicks and we are starting our own chapter too.

The sisterhood is like Girl Scouts for grown ups. You even get to earn merit badges! Okay it sounds a little hokey, but it is fun. I earned my first merit badge in "Horse Dreams." I got a little merit badge to sew on my jacket or purse or whatever. Other merit badges include "Know Your Food," "In the Garden," and "knitting."

This post is for: What's your Beef?
To earn this badge I need to write about grass fed beef. Most of my information comes from the website: Eat Wild.

I remember the first time I visited a farm owned by some of my relatives. They raised beef cattle. We walked up to a small pen that was stuffed full of brown and white cows. They were all standing about ankle deep in manure. I was rather disgusted. The rest of my family took the view that that was where our food came from and that was that. They didn't seem troubled that our meat was standing in muck. I was just a kid, but even I knew that really could not be healthy for the animals. I loved horses at the time and knew about things such as thrush and parasites. Was this really the best way to raise beef?

As the years have past and I continued learning about farm animals I became increasingly upset with the way those animals are treated. They are fed odd things that cows would never normally eat, such as: candy, chicken feathers, and by products. Some of which originally came from cows, that lead to Mad Cow Disease. They also are not allowed to be cows. The steers are kept in tiny, over crowed feed lots. Talk about stressed. All that stress leads to disease, that disease is treated with antibiotics. We have all heard about what happens with the over use of antibiotics. They become worthless. Well I could go on and on but a lot of that information is on the Eat Wild website.

Most distressing is what happened after I read all of this. I went to work, I teach, one of my students raises steers for 4H. She loves to talk about her steers and was telling me all about them. I asked her if she grass fed her steers and she looked at me as if I had grown a second head. "Oh no," she explained, "we need to feed corn to get the best growth." The organization that is helping our young rural kids grow up to become the next set of farmers still prizes the fastest growth over quality.

Quality you may ask, yes quality. Grass fed beef is higher in vitamin E, a natural preservative that prolongs shelf life as well as give us more vitamin E in our diet. Grass fed beef is higher in omega 3 fatty acids, vitamin C, and beta carotenes. Not to mention it is lower in total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories. Red meat is not bad for us, red meat that is raised on corn is bad for us.

Believe it or not pasture raised animals are better for the environment as well. Think of all that manure, which is often wasted by putting it in a treatment facility. More energy has to be expended to deal with it. In pasture raise animals. Those animals poop as they more across the land. They spread it out and fertilize as they go so to speak. Not to mention that studies show that cows on pasture produce less greenhouse gases. Also if that land was used instead to grow corn to feed the cattle there is more soil erosion.

Of course it is more labor intensive, requires more knowledge, and the cattle grows at a slower pace. Really though, is that such a bad thing? Right now the price for grass fed beef is higher than for factory raised beef. The benefits far out weight the difficulties.

So give grass fed beef a try. It's tasty too! To find some in your area check here.

Seeds

2010-02-26T09:13:00.000-08:00

I have chosen some of my seeds.

Squash Summer:
Cocozelle
Heirloom- fast growing bush-type with racing stripes

Baby Round Zucchini
Heirloom- delicate and easily bruised French variety

Early Prolific Strightneck
Heirloom- from 1938, the year my mother was born. Is resistant to squash bug

Tomato Bush:
Green zebra
Heirloom- Old variety, sweet zingy. Crack free

Cucumber:
Homemade Pickles
Supposed to be one of the best pickling cucumbers. I can't wait!

Pumpkin:
Sugar Pie
Heirloom- sweet and fine grained texture. Can't wait to decorate and eat!

Seedlings. . . .

2010-02-25T05:23:00.000-08:00

Those little greenhouse packs for herb and peppers just set my little hands to twitching. . . yes there are better herbs out there, but those little packs are so cute. So I caved. I got a little herb pack and a pepper pack.

There is just something miraculous about putting the little seeds in the dirt and then watching the little plants emerge. how does that little lifeless seed come to life and grow. I know I am not the first person to ponder these things, but every time I plant a seed I feel like a child again, seeing the little plant for the first time.

All of the herbs came up: parsley, oregano, and basil. Two of the three peppers come up: hot Portugal and sweet cayenne. The Santiago did not. I will have to replants some of those.

Garden Site

2010-01-31T07:40:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-21T18:00:00.001-08:00

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!!

2010-01-20T06:17:00.000-08:00

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.