This year was our first year for growing things in straw bales. I really didn't know what to expect, so I was very pleased when I saw how well things grow in straw bales.
i'm showing how I did things. I'm not saying that this is the best way to do it. It's just the way I did it.....and it worked out pretty well for us.
We grew Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplants and even petunias in our straw bales. They all did very well, and the vegetables produced lots of fruit. I thought the eggplants did especially well. I've always had trouble with flea beetles bothering our eggplants, and they didn't bother the plants in the straw bales as much.
In this video, I show a day by day look at how to condition the straw bales for planting, then I show exactly how I planted my plants. At the end of the video, I give you a look at the vegetable plants loaded with fruit, so you can see exactly how well it worked out in our zone 6b Midwest garden.
Even though I used a compost thermometer to check the temperatures in my straw bales, many people use digital meat thermometers.
For more information on Straw Bale Gardening, and to see the straw bale conditioning recipe that I followed, here is an article by Washington State University Extension: https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/2071/2013/12/Straw-Bale-Gardening.pdf
Compost Thermometer: https://amzn.to/2OVf0ht (affiliate)
The soil mix I used: https://youtu.be/u0AZDHSTt8M
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/WarLetters
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/midwestgardener
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I didn't have a sponsor for this video, but I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. That means that I will receive a small percentage of any sales generated from one of my affiliate links, but you won't pay any extra. It's one more way that you can support our channel.