Bales mostly set up

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!

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.