Straw Bales are planted....Everything is in!

Pepper, Leeks, Onions and Tomatillo's with a top dressing of trailing flowers! 

The bales are done with their twelve day process of conditioning.  I mostly followed Joel Karsten directions (screwed up days 3, 4, 5 and added more fertilizer than I should have) however this is a pretty forgiving process and the bales where cooking away come day 12.  

Now this whole garden is new, the raised beds, the squash arch, and even the placement of the bales.  Strangely enough winter sunlight seems to be different than summer sunlight, in other words those darn leaves on the trees changed a lot of my sunlight to shade.  Now, it also preferable to run your bales north to south, but Jim, my husband, wasn't having any of it.  So our compromise was putting the bales on the end of the raised beds running east to west.  The problem with this configuration is if I put my larger tomatoes in the bale's (which was the plan) it will shade two of my beds.  So where in the past I've done all my tomatoes in the bales and eliminated blight issue's, that was not options for these bales.  So the bales on the south side of my raised beds, which get about 8-10 hours of sun have in them; eight pepper plants, one California Wonder, two Habanero’s, two Picante, three Jalapeno’s.  There are twenty six leeks and ten red onions as well as three Verde Tomatillo plants.  The leeks and onions I purchased as sets, the Pepper's I grew indoor under my lights and the Tomatillo's are Winter Sowed.  After reading Joel Karsten book on Straw Bale Gardening I took the challenge of trying to make my bales "pretty".  So right on the edges are Red Wave Petunia's and Blue Lobelia.  I have some trailing Nasturtium that I've started by seed as well.  As stuff fill in I keep everyone updated with pictures.  The four bales on the other side get 6-10 hours of sunlight so I planted them a bit differently.  The back two bales have Johnny Seeds Gonzales Cabbage I grew from Winters Sowing.  These are mini cabbage that are about 4-6" in diameter.  So I planted them a bit closer than what Joel Karsten recommended.  Ok so instead of 4-5 I put in 10 and then mixed a dill and Calendula to act as a buffer to the four peppers and 10 onions I put in.  I finished that last bale with three Purple Tomatillo plants.  Now I didn't plant any flowers over there as there is still a lot of garden construction going on (removal of a stupid ornamental tree).

With a bad back and arthritis in my knees raised beds were essential for me.  The six 12" deep beds with the squash arch and the soil (compost) ran a total of $350.  The eight straw bales ran $4 a piece for a total of $16.  It hard to compare the two as my raised beds are 3'X8' and a straw bale is 2'X3', but I suppose if you do it by square foot, the straw bale method for a 24 square feet is $16 and for the 3'X8' raised bed without the squash arch was $50.  However you will need to buy new bales so in four years’ time it's a bit of a wash in factoring the cost.  Now which is more productive we will see.  That is if the temperature every gets above 50 degree here! 

So What's New in the Garden?

Well here in Minnesota it has stopped snowing!  We have all been out in the garden trying to catch things up outside.  Today though it is a rainy day, time to catch things up on inside.  Which means taking a moment to blog about what going on in the garden.

Despite the name "Serial Tiller Pat" I've left behind my best friend for raised beds. Above is my little red machine, my super duper cool Troy-Bilt Super BroncoRear Tine Tiller!  This lady in red does some serious work!   It is kind sad because she hasn't been in the garden this year but is in the garage collect dust not dirt.  Doesn't it look like she is pouting there in the corner.  I'll be sad to see her go, but she off to my brother place with 10 acres of un-touched land just waiting to be tilled for vegetable and flower gardens.  I know going to a good home.

This year is the year of my raised beds.  I've spent most of the winter planing and changing plans enlarging plans and scaling back just a bit after my husband see them.  He has put in for me six raised beds using 3"X4'X8' Cherry Stained Landscape Timbers we got at Menards for $2.19 a piece.  Each bed is 3' Wide X 8' Long and 11 1/2 " tall.  First he laid the beds out, then he told me what would and wouldn't work.  As he is always telling me I'm the engineer he's the guy that makes it work.  First he laid it all out in the yard, then he started building each individual bed.  After some debate, I convinced him that yes the sod needed t be removed.   Now he wasn't happy about this hence you can't see his face, but up came the sod.  He also didn't think the bed needed to be level, after a lengthy debate, the beds are level too.

Once the base of the bed was level we put down hardware fabric to keep the moles out, and then cardboard

on top of that and then landscape fabric on top of the cardboard.  We then put 1/2 of the frame that we had nailed together in place.  Once that was he had added the next two layers of landscaping timbers I had him line it with that Professional Landscape Fabric.  This is the stuff they tell you to put under walkways and patios not gardens.  It doesn't really breath but here my goal was to prevent the Landscape Timbers from leaching into my soil.  I was told it was perfectly safe, I just wasn't entirely sold on what they were telling me.  So we put in this added protection.  To the right is the first finished bed.  Jim could knock out about 2 of these in four to six hours depending on the help he was getting and the engineering discussion we had.  We then went to Lynde Greenhouse and Nursery on 9293 Pineview Lane North in Maple Grove and purchased compost.   For $15 they will put two bobcat scoops in the back of your pick up or trailer.  We used a trailer an then backed the trailer into the back yard, less wheel barrel work that way.  Now we could have gone to the city compost and shoveled into the trailer for free, but I thought having them load the trailer for $15 was well worth the price.  It took us four loads to fill all the beds so $60.

We then went to Fleet Farm and bought Hog Panels, I had one way I wanted my squash arch to go up and Jim had different way.  We did it Jim's way, it looks nice but I'm thinking we may have a problem with it if we get a big storm and it's full of squash but we will see.  Right now, I have a side by side comparison of before the project started (It is the dreaming photo with snow falling) and to now other photos I took today as we are almost finished!  I have some more planting to do (let's hope it stops raining).  Jim is bring home 8 straw bales that I will use on the ends of the outside beds to do some more tomato plants.  Right now with the straw bales the whole project has cost $412 not including plants.  My budget was to do it all for less than $500.  That means Jim's got $88 to go fishing this weekend.  :)

Dreaming 

Looking good!