Allotments 4 All
Produce => Edible Plants => Topic started by: Digeroo on May 17, 2011, 20:13:37
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So I managed to get my straw bales two at £3 a piece - great. :) Except now the entire car is covered in bit of straw. :o :o An smells of summer picnics down on my uncle's farm. ;D
I need to make holes in them, should these go right the way through to the ground. dy on our site from the W/NW so would be good if I could somehow grow the courgettes in the leeward side, does anyone have any suggestions as to how I might achieve that.
What sort of compost/soil is best. I have leaf mould, recycled compost, homemade compost and soil and some failed commercial potting compost but helps well with drainage being peat based. So suggestions for a good mix please.
What happens when the courgette plant begins to get long and lanky does it hang down onto the ground? What stops it breaking off under the weight?
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Digeroo, Tee Gee has info you are looking for on his gardeners almanac site. It looks very interesting.
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Ok...the idea is get the bale sodden wet first and getting it to start composting process..even heating up..
Don't cut the strings,,nor planting holes yet.
Pour lots of water in..and now the nice bit..wait for it..WEE.. ;D Yep..keep weeing on it..or save it and pour it on.
Pile good load of grass clippings on top..water..plastic sheet over and let it cook. Ideally repeating the process every other day. Eventually the bale goes soft in the middle and you 'just' scoop some of the now 'mushy' straw out maybe adding bit of compost and plant your plants. At this stage you bale should not be able to heat anymore. Old grass clippins and the scooped out straw you can use as mulch and they will feed your plants.
The string will stay on and keep it all together.. ;)
I would spend at least a week preparing the bales,longer if your plants can wait that long as straw will take bit time to go 'soft'.
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Sponge brain ;D ;D ;D.
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I will start things off tomorrow - can make a suitable high nitrogen collection by that time. ;D I had forgotten they would need a week or so to heat up and cool down, but I can pot on the courgettes in the meantime.
Where abouts on TGs site please GJ? Being a bit goofy can't find it.
I kind of thought the idea was that the warming would help to warm up the courgette.
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I googled it & that's what came up Digeroo.
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I had forgotten they would need a week or so to heat up and cool down, but I can pot on the courgettes in the meantime.Actually..ideally more like month..but in a week or two you should be able to manage with little help from added compost.. ;)
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A couple of points first you have to let the bails cool down before planting and why not be a little more modern and use a high nitrogen feed such as Bone Meal or Sulphate of Ammonia instead having to piss on them,This will reduce the heating time.
Why you want to go to all this trouble is beyond me if i grow them outside where my allotment is any one can
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I should have got them a few weeks ago but it was a case of having the back seats of the car flattned and so having enough space for the straw. It is still too cold to plant the courgettes outside anyway.
Perhaps I better start a few more off just in case it takes a bit longer.
I just thoght that the bales would be a good idea because I intend to grow some more courgettes using the bales a wind protection. Growing something on top to some expent is a bonus. I also want the straw bales to cover part of the allotment in the autumn on a no dig basis and also for paths so they stay weed free and dry when it starts raining again.
Not actually got any Bone meal will BFB do instead?
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Fish Blood and bone is more of a ballanced feed not a high nitrogen feed (Organic equivelent of Growmore) but you will still require some to go in the bails before planting.
You can get Bone Meal or Sulphate of Amonia at places like Wilko,s or be a bit cheeky if you are passing a farm pop in and and ask the farmer if he will give you a bit of Uria for an experiment. Never know your luck and shy boys get no soup LOL
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I am worried about sourcing animal urea because of the AP situation.
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This link might help;
http://www.thegardenersalmanac.co.uk/Data/Growing%20on%20straw/Growing%20on%20straw.htm (http://www.thegardenersalmanac.co.uk/Data/Growing%20on%20straw/Growing%20on%20straw.htm)
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I am worried about sourcing animal urea because of the AP situation.
LOL i was not refering to animal urine i was refering to the link
http://www.ehow.com/about_5380766_urea-fertilizer.html
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Digeroo..just have extra cup of coffee or two and your urea needs are sorted.. ;) ;D
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Thanks for posting the link TG. Great stuff.
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Thank you all for your help I shall get them started tomorrw and see wnat happens. If all else fails they will still be a good windbreak.
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.......but why spend so much on all that straw and other stuff , the seeds are expensive in the first place ....when you can just plant them in the ground ! :o
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Whats life without a bit of experimentation ;D
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The wind was whipping across the lottie at 60 miles an hour on Friday and on Sunday was less ferocious but extremely cold, and again on Monday we had strong wind though this time very warm. It is not at all condusive to growing courgettes it upsets them enormously so the biggest thing is to stop the wind, growing things out the top of the straw is a secondary consideration.
And as Shirlton says its a bit of an experiment, a bit of fun, something different.
I do not have a pristine plot with regimented rows of veg standing to weed free attentions like the dgitally produced armies of the baddies in Star Wars. One child last year described my plot as a jungle: I like my crops dripping by the bucket load off huge plants.
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I'm doing this too, and started a thread on it, recommending Tee Gee's advice and giving the link to it.
Even after a couple of months open to the elements, watered and sprinkled heavily with sulphate of ammonia, they never actually heated up, but they have got softer inside.
I made planting holes with a heavy iron crowbar thing I have (I normally use it as a post hole maker for stakes, or to plant leeks) dropped into the bales and pushed backwards and forwards. I pulled out handfuls of straw (reserved to mulch the plants) and filled the hole with a mixture of ordinary topsoil and old manure (bought sack).
I certainly did not make the holes down to the ground because I followed advice and put down a waterproof tarpaulin before placing the straw bales. One of my goals is to smother weeds and grass (pastureland) and create a large new bed without digging (12 bales for £36, free delivery and placing), plus a mass of mulch/compost when the growing season is over.
My plants have only been in for over a week, but already look much better than they did in their pots, even though I have only been able to water them twice in 10 days. I have covered them with netting tunnels and fleece to protect them from cold and wind and drying out, but that will be coming off soon.
I am growing squashes in the ground as well, but experiments are always interesting, as shirlton says. The people who use this method are very enthusiastic and persuasive, and I am interested to see how it turns out.
Another possibility is placing the bales in a square, filling in the central space with newspaper, cardboard, weeds, grass, soil, compost, manure, anything else to hand, and planting into that and into the bales, to make a large raised bed. This again would smother existing weeds and produce a mass of useful mulch/compost as well (I hope) as a useful series of crops at the same time.
I have three half plots, two of them gradually being dug out of weedy meadowland, and I hope these straw bales will be a relatively inexpensive way of smothering the weeds, producing crops meanwhile, and ending up with large fertile areas to be gardened more conventionally in future years.
So it is not just a purposeless waste of money and effort, I hope. If the squashes grow well this year, I intend to try the large square raised bed next year.
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Now I have sourced the straw I have all sorts of ideas of what to do with them.
I have just realised there is another huge advantage. Some of my lottie is contaminated with AP, and it has not worn off. If I put down a waterproof membrane under the straw I can grow above the affected areas and be sure there will be no contamination issues.
I have been reading your thread Artichoke iwith interest it actually spurred me into action to check out a little notice I had seen re straw for sale.
Let the experients begin.
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I just have a vision in my head of furtive allotmenteers having a sneaky pee on bales of straw up and down the length of the UK. ;D
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Well.....I'm not one of them.....
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Furtive? Say it loud, say it clear: Alchemy is the way to go: http://transitionnorwich.blogspot.com/2010/05/alchemy.html
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I just have a vision in my head of furtive allotmenteers having a sneaky pee on bales of straw up and down the length of the UK. ;D
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There are ways of doing it discretely.
I have realised that I can use this method to cover an area which is still contaminated with AP so I have bought another 3 bales and will put a plastic membrane underneath. Though I do think Dow now owes me some money.
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I started two bales off on Tuesday and there must be something extra in the Eau de Toilette. The bale started that way is really hot already but the other one is barely warm.
However I do not understand the wait to plant it up, I thought that the point was to give the courgettes some extra heat. It was more or less freezing here last night, a bit out warmth is just what a courgette needed.
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My understanding from reading is that the heat is too much for plants and would frazzle their roots. The point of the heat is to get the bales decomposing quickly to the point where they make a good medium for plants to grow in when they have cooled down a bit.
You are lucky getting the heat! Mine just never did heat up, but they did get softer over the weeks I waited - it wasn't like trying to plant into fresh hard straw.
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Will be following this thread as well :)
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I have been trying to excavate a hole and I see what you mean about the hard straw. It is pretty solid. I am wondering about burrning a potting hole. Hopefully if it is wet ti will not take off.
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Did you see my post about ramming a heavy iron rod (crowbar, post hole maker, whatever) into the straw and pushing it round and round to make a deep, widish hole? I found that much the easiest. The other solution was my son's - hit the spot with an axe several times to break up the straw. We found that once we were through the "crust", the inside was soft enough to scrabble out in handfuls. Then I filled the hole with a potting mixture, put the plant in, and mulched it with the handfuls.
Another visit today saw 80% of the plants crawling avidly across the straw - others a bit slug attacked and stationary, but not at all bad for the time of year and weather. I covered them with fleece against the terrible winds expected tomorrow, disrupting out plot BBQ.
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PS Even a good solid rake handle might do - I don't think I could face burning out each individual planting hole! The aim is for an easier life, not a harder one......
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http://s152.photobucket.com/albums/s186/strawbaleman/?action=view¤t=P6040321.jpg
I am hoping for a dense canopy like this to keep the straw damp....
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Well they are off. The bales are warm but not hot so I put in the courgettes. They had a good warm night of it, there was condensation inside their bottle cloche. I am keeping a eye out on the heat, I can cool them off with some water in necessary.
It was not all that easy to hack out the hole but managed to remove some straw and compress some and so make a hole. I filled this with compost and fertiizer and watered it well and it mostly disappeared so about half a bucket of compost finally disappeared somewhere into the bail.
Sourced another couple of bales so thought I might try a couple of melons on them as well. Though I have one which is much harder and compact which for this use may be a disadvantage.
There seems to be something of a problem with water. They act like thatching and the water seems to be channelled out the side and never really reaches the bottom.
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Watering: when I tipped full buckets on, I did find the water flowed through and out the other end, but now I use a slow hose and it sinks in very well. I have the baler twine on the top and bottom - might that make a difference? Is yours on the sides?
I found the holes a pain to make until I used my iron bar, and my holes have less compost than yours - we'll have to keep comparing notes!
I gave mine a foliar feed of seaweed yesterday to compensate for only having straw to sink their roots into, and I plan a scattering of poultry pellets before I next water them. They have been in for 3 weeks now, and are growing well, uncovered, with one courgette fattening up!
Sadly, something is attacking the stalks of several of them, almost eating through them, which doesn't help. I am surprised they are continuing to grow - but I have seen this happen in the ground as well.