Anyone else do straw bale gardening?

[Beth_B]

Straw bale gardening.
No digging and no soil required. Once composted for a little while (speed up the process by keeping bales damp and fertilized for about two weeks), the straw is the medium. The attached photo was taken ten days after starting to condition the bales. I'll try to find some other photos from last year.

This will be my third year. I've experimented with "controls" - putting some plants in soil, others in the bales. Based on two years so far, tomato production in the bales was vastly superior. This year I'll be doing tomatoes, potatoes, kale, chard and green beans in the bales.

Pluses:
No digging!
No soil required.
Better production in general.
Weeding is much easier.
Feral/stray cats won't use your veggie beds as toilets.
Can have a successful garden even if your native soil is poor.
Portable and works in small spaces. I saw a blog where someone just had a small patio, and had two bales in little red wagons. She could easily move them around to get enough sun.

Cons:
Alas, slugs seem to love the bales. I'm still experimenting with "natural" ways to deter them.
Because it's such a good growing medium, weeds love them too. Although as noted above, they're much easier to pull.
By the end of summer the bales get slumped, gray and sort of sloppy-looking. Not that big of a deal though,and can be rectified with fencing or some sort of border.

So, anyone else done this, or thought about it? I'm a relative newbie so I'll take any tips you might have. Also happy to answer questions if I can!

 

[Kansas Terri]

I had trouble with my straw bale gardening: the plants looked like they were too dry. They did EVENTUALLY pick up, but the cucumbers were not as large as the ones I grew in the ground.

How did you water your bales? Did you dump a pail of water on them (like I did), or did you set up a sprinkler?????

 

[Beth_B]

They definitely need more water than plants in the ground, Terri. Last year we had an uncommonly wet growing season, which helped. I'm wondering if perhaps dumping water on them results in much of the water running and bouncing off the surface instead of soaking down to the roots? A sprinkler might have the same effect. I'm guessing your bales were too dry down by the roots.

Best and most easy would be a soaker hose, but I haven't done that. I have twelve bales all in a single row along a chain-link fence so I water by hand with the hose. I poke the hose a little into the bale by each plant for about a minute so the water trickles down deep. When we had the occasional string of hot and dry days, I was watering every day.

That said - I grew both summer and winter squash last year and there didn't seem to be any difference between the bales ones and the soil ones. Plus they took up a lot of space on the bales and got all tangled up with the tomatoes! So this year I'm just keeping squash in the ground on their little hills.