Straw bales in large garden

So I recently bought 12 acres of pasture with the intent of turning it into a homestead.  As my husband and I are getting up in years and my DD is partially disabled with a permanent problem with her leg from a bad break, I am really looking hard at ways to keep the work on the homestead as simple as possible.  

I said simple, not easy.  I know that farms of any kind are hard work.

However, I do need to make it simple for our aging and very trouble prone bodies.  I'm planning on having several cattle.  I'll be rotational grazing them, and the ones I'll be getting are going to be highlands - thrives on poor pasture, half the size of the commercial breeds, can be tamed and milked if needed.  I'm thinking about sheep - shetlands because some of them are rooed instead of sheared, and they don't need the same amount of feed as the icelandic as well as being much calmer.

So, hopefully the animals won't be the more difficult part of the homestead.  Which leads us to the place where I will be spending most of my homesteading energy - the gardens.  As the land is pasture, I need to kill a lot of grass and I have been thinking about putting down straw bales to both kill the grass and to provide organic matter to plant into.

So here is the bare bones plan I was thinking of and am wishing to get other's perspectives on

1 - Throw down lots of cardboard

2 - Cover the cardboard with the straw bales

3 - Add urine to the straw bales to begin composting

4 - Continue to add urine about once a week or two times a month until winter sets in

5 - Hope that the straw bales will be able to be spread out a bit and planted come spring



The reason that I am not going to go the route described in Straw Bale Planting is simple.  My land is two hours away from where I live currently.  I don't have the time or the gas money to go down there every day until I'm on the land.  I will be down there every weekend or every other weekend in order to take care of the garden starting next spring.  This is because the garden I am planning will be very large, about 50 feet by 50 feet for the regular vegetables.  I'm hoping that I can plant a 3 Sisters garden in another area, and a melon patch in yet another area, but I'm trying to be realistic and just starting with row crops with tons of straw mulch in the form of the hay bales.

Please come and poke holes in my plans so I can figure out what will work and what won't!

Oh, and watering comes from the pond and the sky, so I'll be moving water sort of by hand in that I put a hose in the pond (1/4 acre and 14 feet deep in spots, never gone dry), and the other end in the garden and turn the handle on the water wheel pump.

Interesting project!

A bit more information would help.

- What is your climate? Growing zone, rainfall, number of frost free days? These influence how quickly the hay/straw bales will break down.

- What is the condition of the soil under your garden area?

- Do you intend to plant all of your new garden right away, in spring? Or can you add soil/compost to part of it, and leave some of it be a longer term project?

My garden is in Missouri, zone 6a, and the land as far as I've been able to tell is heavy clay.  That is another reason I'm trying to go for getting as much organic matter into the soil as possible.  So hot and humid in the summer and stormy in the spring and fall, snow in the winter.  As for frost free days - May to November.  For fertilizer, I have rabbits and chickens and will be cleaning out the pens later this fall so the manure will be well rotted by spring.

I plan to keep adding straw bales around the garden to increase it every year, but I plan on planting at least a 50 X 50 foot section in spring because of the food shortages I see coming.  I have food storage, but I know I'll need more come late spring/early summer.  I know that I won't be able to grow an entire year's worth of food right away.  That's something to work up to - but I also know that if I didn't have to wait until the last of the haying was done on the property, I would be down there right now trying to plant a fall garden.  I keep getting the feeling that I NEED the garden.

So I hope that this plan will help me to get a garden growing, if not well, than at least I will be planting a lot, this spring.  Even if every plant only gives me about a 1/4 of the harvest it should, if I plant enough I should be able to feed my family a good portion for the year.  

Confused about is it hay from the land or straw from wheat fields that have been desiccated with roundup?

What I do is mow the weeds in the field and it blows into a wagon which I dump on my garden to keep it mulched.  The finer pieces of the grass from the mower do a better job of mulching and composting than hay or straw.

It's commercial straw bales as that's all I can get my hands on around here.  I'm stuck in a city for now while I get the homestead set up.  As for mulching with grass, well we don't have anything to cut the grass with in the first place.  We're trading with another farmer, (I don't know who, my dear husband is the one who set things up), and he gets the hay that he cuts in trade for the grading work for our first building on the land.

Given the plans you've shared, I don't think commercial straw bales will give you any trouble. There's plenty of time and bioactivity to deal with any trace nasties. At least that's been my experience.

You may want to readthrough this thread, paying close attention to Dr. Redhawk's posts. He is Permies' resident soil scientist.

For further soil building info, puruse his epic soil series. I have a link to them in my signiture.

As others have suggested, it is important to know the source of the straw bales.

Are straw bales available from local growers?

Another concern is how many straw bales will you need for a 50' x 50' garden.

This article from Deep Green Permaculture might offer some good advice:

https://deepgreenpermaculture.com/2021/05/27/how-many-straw-bales-do-i-need-to-mulch-my-garden/

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:You may want to readthrough this thread, paying close attention to Dr. Redhawk's posts. He is Permies' resident soil scientist.

Redhawk's advice in this thread is bang on target.

I would never use commercial straw bales.  Almost all are treated with preservative and they can kill an area off so that nothing will grow for years.  If you don't know 100% that they haven't been treated, you will destroy any chance of a garden growing for at least 3 years, and maybe as long as 5 or 6.

Preservative on straw bales? Haven't heard of that. Around here, most straw is used as bedding for animals and is supposed to break down in the manure pile. What would be the point of treating it?

EDIT: Perhaps you meant hay bales? In that case, I agree. I would want to know the source to ensure I wasn't introducing persistent gunk that would kill my plants.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Preservative on straw bales? Haven't heard of that. Around here, most straw is used as bedding for animals and is supposed to break down in the manure pile. What would be the point of treating it?

EDIT: Perhaps you meant hay bales? In that case, I agree. I would want to know the source to ensure I wasn't introducing persistent gunk that would kill my plants.

Not sure, but I can find hay bales here readily that don't have preservative, but I haven't found that with straw unless I buy specifically organic straw.  Granted, I haven't asked a lot of people.

So far the only concern seems to be pesticide residue, so I'll ask my husband to see what sort of straw he can find down near the farm.  He's already said that he doesn't want to haul the bales all the way down, so if he can find the least amount of nasty on the straw all the better.

Thank so much for everyone's input!

Trace Oswald wrote:Not sure, but I can find hay bales here readily that don't have preservative, but I haven't found that with straw unless I buy specifically organic straw.

Trace, I suspect we're miscommunicating somehow. Help me understand the knowledge you have about straw bales.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:

Trace Oswald wrote:Not sure, but I can find hay bales here readily that don't have preservative, but I haven't found that with straw unless I buy specifically organic straw.

Trace, I suspect we're miscommunicating somehow. Help me understand the knowledge you have about straw bales.

I have very limited experience with this, but I'm happy to share.  I have a friend I buy the large round bales of hay from.  Calling it "hay" might be a little misleading because it's just pasture that he lets grow and then bales at the end of the year, so it's grass, weeds, thistles, whatever.  He doesn't spray either while it is growing or with preservative after he bales it.  I know two people that grow straw and makes the small square bales.  One sprays his with preservative.  He doesn't sell locally and I don't know what the expected end use of it is, and I don't know why he sprays it unless it is so it doesn't get moldy during transport or something.  The other guy I know grows organic straw.  I haven't bought any for a few years.  I used to buy it to put around my trailer house in the winter for insulation, and then in the spring I would plant in it.  As far as animal bedding, I'm surrounded by huge dairy farms.  They all grow hundreds, some thousands, of acres of corn for feed, and they use the shredded corn stalks for bedding.  They are baled into those big round bales like hay.

Wow!

Today I learned that spraying preservatives on hay is actually a thing.

https://extension.sdstate.edu/understanding-hay-inoculants-and-preservatives-dry-hay

I'm not sure if this is a location specific practice, but I guess there is more than Grazeon to worry about when it comes to hay/straw.

Annette Henry wrote:So far the only concern seems to be pesticide residue, so I'll ask my husband to see what sort of straw he can find down near the farm.  He's already said that he doesn't want to haul the bales all the way down, so if he can find the least amount of nasty on the straw all the better. Thank so much for everyone's input!

Yes thank everyone for contributing. To clarify maters because many of the things mentioned get conflated and need different considerations.  Some hay and straw will contain residue of herbicide designed to kill herbs but not grass and most of the vegetables are selected weeds. One type is an antibiotic which kills the bacteria needed to feed the herbs. Another is persistent chemical in the soil that is absorbed by the grass and even kills after it has passed through the animals digestion.  The article on hay preservative is about adding an acid or a culture to make an acid like in making sourcrout.  In fact what we used to do is salt the hay for this purpose just as sourcrout uses salt to prevent the wrong bacteria from growing.
Trace Oswald has the best solution which is to look for hay that is of inferior quality because it is just cut and baled to clear the field.  Round bales have the advantage of just unrolling them to lay down a layer.
If you can get hay from the farmer that is mowing your field that he finds unsuitable for his animals use that.  Covering the mulch with a billboard tarp after it is rained on will speed up the composting of the hay and grass under it.  When I do this the predatory life moves in during the winter and eats the the slugs and grubs that would eat the plants in the spring.  And the cultivators have been at work all winter preparing the soil. Here is an example.

Timothy Norton wrote:Today I learned that spraying preservatives on hay is actually a thing.

Me too -- I was surprised. All of these are designed to slow degradation by mold, in both hay and straw.  I went down the rabbit hole and looked up the active ingredients, which don't raise huge concerns for me personally, but others will see it differently. I guess a good-or-bad discussion belongs in the Cider Press.