Perhaps over the last 2 years or so you have been using the straw bale garden method, and now you are wondering what you can do with the depleted straw bales.
The good news is that although the bales may well be ‘past their sell by date’ with regards to growing vegetables in them, you can still put them to good use in other ways such as…
- Use the depleted partially rotten straw bales to bolster the compost heap – or indeed start a new compost heap with the straw bale making up the ‘brown’ material for the compost.
- Use as a mulch for between garden plants to protect the roots during hot weather and restrict weed growth.
- If you have chickens then they just love to scratch around in old depleted straw, and with the addition of nitrogen-rich chicken poop it adds another dimension for the compost!
- Even though the bale has broken down, you can still grow potatoes in the remains. Either grow the potatoes under the straw, or compact the straw into a wooden frame planter and plant the potatoes within.
- Mix the depleted bale into the vegetable patch. Simply turn over the bale into the soil in the veggie patch. Even though this will not add nutrition as such, it will help to condition the soil by breaking it up and adding drainage and friability to poor quality soil. This is best done at the end of the growing season and left over winter to further break up.
How long does a straw bale last?
The typical lifespan of a straw bale when following the straw bale garden method is about 2-3 years.
However if you enclose the bale in a wooden frame as you may see in the image on this page, you will get at least an extra year or 2 out of the bale.
After this time you can simply let the bale collapse in on itself as it degrades and top it off with a good compost mix to extend the period even further.
This is basically the same method as a raised bed garden and the depleted straw acts as the bulk of your compost/soil mix for the raised bed.
Why add bales to the compost heap
Whilst it is true that a depleted straw bale has nothing in the way of nutritional value to add to the compost, it does add bulk and carbon to the mix.
A good compost mix consists of about ¾ to 4/5ths brown material with the rest being green or nitrogen rich material. So we see that you need this bulk material in order to create a decent amount of compost.
Old straw bales are absolutely ideal for this as they are already half composted and a free source of the bulk brown material that your compost needs.
Straw bale gardening is perhaps one of the truly ‘green’ methods of gardening as it repurposes straw bales destined for animal bedding and creates a growing environment for many different vegetables and fruit plants.
Even when the life of the bale is apparently over, as we can see from the examples above, there is still life in the bale – or at least the ability to start new life in the form of quality composting material or chicken bedding!
How can you grow vegetables in a barren straw bale?
The fact is that a bale of straw offers nothing in the way of nutrients when it comes to growing plants. Being the discarded remains of a cereal crop such as barley or wheat, it represents the carbon or ‘brown’ element but none of the nitrogen needed to grow vegetables.
However if the correct conditioning routine is followed, the barren straw bale becomes a nutrient-rich environment in which many plants can be grown very successfully.
This is different from the hay bale which is in fact full of nitrogen-rich dry grass made from meadow grass and destined for winter animal feed owing to its nutritional value.
Hay bale gardening is similar in many ways to growing in straw (as you may see in this post), but the conditioning and care of hay bales is completely different from the straw bale.
However the depleted hay bale can be used in very much the same way as the straw, more especially in the composting process.
