Friday, March 23, 2012

How to Make Straw Bale Raised Bed Gardens

For those friends of mine that have asked me how we make our Straw Bale Raised Bed Gardens, here are some photos and how we do it:

This raised garden bed is made with 8 straw bales.  Sometimes we use 6 and sometimes we use 10 depending on the space where we are locating them. We line them up so it is easy to reach into the center of the bed from each side.  It makes it easier to pick our vegetables and also maintain weed prevention when it isn't too wide.

This photo shows the straw bales set in position on the shade cloth with the first load of alpaca manure in it.


First we lay weed cloth on the ground and then place the straw bales where we want them.  If we are using a wheel barrow to haul and dump alpaca, chicken and horse manure inside, then we keep one end open to make it easy to wheel into it.  The first load of manure in this garden was a wheel barrow full of alpaca manure.  the next load was a wheel barrow full of chicken manure. We spread it out with a rake and then dumped a few used tea bags, vegetable cuttings and egg shells.  We only use loose tea left overs or tea bags that are made of paper in our composting.  We put left over vegetable cuttings in our garden beds as well.

This shows the alpaca manure and the first load of chicken manure plus tea bags, egg shells and vegetable cuttings
We layer alfalfa hay alternately with horse manure, alpaca, and chicken manure because it gives extra protein in the compost and makes a very rich soil to plant vegetables in.  We make sure to water each layer thoroughly so there is plenty of moisture to help it compost rapidly.
If you are fortunate to have a tractor like we are, then it makes it so much easier to fill the bed with manure
This is layering more manure on top of the layer of alfalfa hay.

Once the raised beds are completely full we use a shovel to dig holes in the garden and bury vegetable cuttings and let them compost making sure that we water the bed periodically to help it compost more rapidly.  We also dig or stir the dirt as it is composting to make sure it gets mixed together and fully composts.  It usually takes about 14 days to compost these beds.

The bed is completely filled with the various layers of manure and alfalfa hay, raked & well watered.
When we were first using llama and alpaca manure we didn't bother to compost it because we could plant directly into it without it burning the plants like un-composted chicken, cow and horse manure does...However we used to feed our llamas, alpacas and horses Orchard Grass Hay - so there was no problem.  Last year we switched to feeding our horses and alpacas Bermuda Grass Hay and it has to be composted now or we end up with our own hay field in our raised beds! ...now we have our own nice hay crop to feed them with and a lot of work to do to re build those gardens once we get the hay out of them!

We cut heavy duty plastic and cover the bed to hold in the moisture and allow it to heat up so it will compost quickly.  We remove the plastic every few days and stir up the soil so it can blend and compost thoroughly.  We have such high winds sometimes here in the High Desert that we need to make sure we keep the plastic secured so some of our wood from our wood pile comes in handy to hold it in place.
  
 The photo below shows a 6 Straw Bale Raised Garden Bed that we made in the early fall of 2011 and composted.  We grew some late squash in it that was quite tasty.  We recently planted some garlic in it which is already beginning to come up.  We also planted sugar peas which are peeking through just barely and a couple of different kinds of squash.  I'll be adding some Nasturtiums to give it a little more color plus Nasturtiums are eatable flowers that are great in salads!

After this planting we will amend the soil so it will stay rich and healthy and provide super healthy veggies!

Sometimes we add earth worms but most of the time they just appear on their own!  We will have quite a few more raised beds this year.  We plan to do some canning and some food dehydration as well as freezing some of our vegetables and fruit this year.  So when it is time to do that, I might blog a little about food preservation.
This is "Stormy" one of our outside "Watch Cats"  I guess he thinks he's doing his job keeping the birds out of the garden!



 

11 comments:

  1. What a process! Great post and the photos tell the story. And your kitty cat is such an appropriate ending. Thanks for following weaverkat--the shibori blog--chat again soon.

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    1. Thanks, Kathleen...I love your blog...very descriptive and fantastic photos!

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  2. Looks great! I just got some of the seeds you gave me started in the house to be transplanted after the last frost. I wonder when that will be lol

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    1. Thanks Collette. I have a bunch of seedlings started inside as well as a few outside...the ones outside I will have to cover with frost cloth on the nights it gets down to frost temp. The weekend I did the llama and alpaca fiber art judging at the llama show in Lancaster, there was a home show going on at the same time. A guy from a seed company told us not to put our tomato plants outside until May over here in our area because of late frost so we will see what the weather is like at the end of April. I may put a few of those out to and use frost cloths when I need to. the frost cloths saved our fruit trees this year when all that crazy weather was going on getting hot and cold and freezing at night. Lowe's still has some in stock and they have some pretty awesome frost protection things for veggies available as well that I might experiment with.

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  3. Marti, I enjoyed the photos. They always tell a story and grab attention, too. How do you deal with the rabbits and your hay bale garden? We feed grain to the bunnies at the corrals to keep them away from nibbling the trees and bushes. Not sure if it's working, tho. ---Rusty

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  4. Hi Rusty, thanks for your comment. We make the raised beds out of straw and not hay so the rabbits don't bother the straw. I imagine the rabbits love the grain you feed them!

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  5. Marti and john! Such a great blog! Gives me all sorts of ideas. That's the best kind
    of sharing!

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  6. Thanks,Barbara. I love your blog too and look forward to all of your inspiring posts!

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  7. Hello. . . great post on the straw bale gardens. I am new to the high desert and we have no farm animals from which to get manure, so I'm unsure of what should be used for planting if you do not have access to that.

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    1. Hi BJ,

      Depending on how large of a garden you ant to make, you can also amend the regular high desert soil with organic soil and organic mulch...if it is a small area you can pick up some great bags of it at Lowe's or maybe have a truck load delivered from one of the nurseries up in the high desert...or see if you have some nearby neighbors with farm animal manure that you could get from them and start composting....one of the best composts that we like to make is with horse manure layered with a bale of alfalfa hay. It makes amazing compost.

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  8. Thank you, Marti. Much appreciated. BTW, I noticed you are also a member of the High Desert Artist Collective! I am also an artist and plan to join up with that group as soon as I am in Phelan full time but right now still have ties in San Diego so probably won't be til Aug/Sept

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