ottawa foodies

strawbalegardens.com/

modernfarmer.com

Love this guy's accent . . .

Hmm.. this gives me some ideas. Anyone know where/how to obtain straw bales locally? I imagine that once the growing season is done, they'd also make excellent mulch for flower beds.

I would bet dollars to donuts that a certain farmer friend of ours could supply a hay bale or two

I've seen them for sale at the farm store immediately beside the bridge in pakenham, if your farmer friend connection doesn't work out.

Straw or hay bales will work for this quite well, but you may get far more weeds with hay bales as compared to straw bales.

LOL organicgirl! My first thought when I say Zym's reply. "Um, nope, I don't want hay. I want straw!"

Guess who grew up rural and who grew up in town? ;)

lol! Yes, for the garden straw is for sure the better choice.

But, in fairness to zymurgist, hay is awesome to rebuild soil and reseed. We do it all the time on our farm anywhere the soil is lean. The broken down hay grows back into thick, thick pasture grasses.

Hay
Straw
Same effing thing to me :-)

Ritchie's sells straw bales. Ask for them at the cash. I use it as mulch.

On Saturday, I'm giving a brief presentation on working with marginal land. For those thinking of trying either straw or hay bale gardening, you may find the before and after pictures I've got here interesting.

This picture here is what the land on our farm looked like before we started using old junk hay and livestock to revitalize it. As you can see, it's pretty bleak.

This next picture is what grew back after we put down a layer of old junk hay which provided organic matter and seeds.

This last picture shows what it looks like after the cows graze down the new growth. What I love about this is even after grazing, there is very little soil showing compared to the first picture.

Great share OrganicGirl. I do a lot of raised bed and earth box gardening, but I haven't tried straw bale yet. It seems to be a really good method though, particularly on marginal land.

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