Well I think I'm gonna use straw from now on in my garden
Well I think I'm gonna use straw from now on in my garden
Most seedlings seem to making their way through it!
I’m hoping stuff like the radishes can get through though, beans are going gang busters with it though, seems to have helped the peas as well. Generally everything since the tops been kept moist!
I do the same thing. I get clean pesticide free straw bales very cheap, about the price of a 6 pack. Straw insulates and helps the beds retain moisture. I use it to hill up the potatoes. Then you can leave it over the winter and in the spring your beds will be so amazingly soft and full of worms. The straw blocks the soil from getting compacted by the rain, and worms will run around loosening the soil.
When you remove the straw it’s halfway rotted. Perfect stuff to make compost with, I like to add my Austrian winter peas to the straw, run them through my lawnmower to chop it all up.
Some people here have said wood chips but you should never put wood chips on vegetable beds. It can be okay around your flower beds but use it sparingly. When wood chips break down they use up the nitrogen in the soil. Straw doesn’t have that effect.
run them through my lawnmower to chop it all up.
yo got a link or how to? this is fascinating but I can't see efficiently mowing back and forth over a pile lol
What is the benefit of straw?
Want their marketing spiel?
It’s an organic mulch, I contemplated using my grass clippings, I wanted hemp, but all was online order and it was the weekend. Can also use leaves.
End of the year, I can just compost it into my soil by tilling it.
I believe we use the cedar bark chunks (the red or brown chunks of wood) to try to keep pest plants from taking root, is the straw to keep moisture in?
Edit: Yay, I was right
In addition to retaining moisture and preventing growth of weeds, it also greatly increases the albedo of the soil. It's a fairly underrated benefit, I think. Nice, dark soil can really soak up heat on those hot summer days. If you need your soil to warm up, like in early spring, you can keep the straw off. It also helps with erosion during rain. If you've ever grown a low-lying green like spinach, you know how dirty it can get due to soil splashing it up, and straw helps with that, too.
The downsides are that it's weirdly stupidly expensive for the name brand product (gardenstraw) considering that it's a waste product.
Getting regular old straw from a hardware store or local farm can be risky because it can contain a lot of weed seeds, and it can have herbicides that can kill your garden. It's also generally longer pieces than the purpose made stuff, so it's less convenient when you are placing it.
It simultaneously protects the seeds from birds or other jerks and keeps the soil moist longer
Huh, looks pretty, too.
Actually didn’t mind the look, thought about doing grass clippings, but weeds and I’m not sure about the nitrogen fixing from the clover. Maybe I’ll try on of the small beds next year with that.
in that case, be careful about your sources. You wouldn't want to introduce pesticides, herbicides, fungicides you try to avoid ( if that's what you do), through straws from a poison farm
i would have kept those straw beds 3, 4 times thicker
Honestly, I wanted to go with hemp, but it was all online order and wouldn’t have gotten here fast enough. Which is strange with them being local, I can’t just drive there.Hempalta
I agree, they recommend 2” thick, but I’m worried about the seedlings making it through. The radish tops would barely crest the top by harvest time?
Just know that slugs love it below that stuff too.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen one, I know they can be here, but it’s usually dry, doesn’t rain often so stuff doesn’t stay very wet. Now that we have talked I’m sure I’ll get some now though haha.
Does it not just blow away?
Some does yeah, I can’t keep the top as moist as I would like with the watering restrictions though.
We get really bad gusts, otherwise I think it would be fine.
Since we see a lawn in the background; consider using your lawn clippings too, they make a good garden mulch layer; very similar to straw.
If I used my grass clippings I would end up seeding my garden beds with grass. Straw can have some seeds but generally very little
Doesn’t most grass species take a couple months to go to seed and dry to be viable? I would worry about spreading other weeds that couldn’t get established through the ground cover, but would excel in the fresh dirt. But that shouldn’t add much more than what was naturally already there though?
I worry about the clover and excess nitrogen, and wouldn’t that become a bit more hard packed and make it hard for seedlings? If I had just a bed of starts I think that’s a great idea though.