Straw has always been a little ….hmmmm…. ugly to me.  I have not realized its beauty until last year.  My mother-in-law has used straw bales around her gardens and she also uses straw to keep weeds out of her flower beds.  I thought it was great…for her….  But after all the time I spent last year on my flower beds…collecting hundreds of cardboard boxes from stores all around my town, laying the cardboard boxes all over my flower beds, and then getting a monstrous pile of mulch and spreading it all over the flower beds (they were beautiful last year)…only to have them FULL of weeds this year – I just sat down and cried in defeat.

And then I picked up my ego and looked at 2 bales of rotten straw that I had and decided I would do anything to minimize the weeds!  I put down the straw in most of my flower beds and I actually really like it!  I wish I could dye it brown so that it looked like mulch…but it isn’t too bad and if it cuts down on weeds – it is priceless.

This year I also am trying out the straw bale garden.  I got a few bales and laid them out and I am planting potatoes in the center of them (cheap raised garden solution!).  I will put some of my nice chicken manure on top of the straw bales (advice from my mother-in-law) so that all through the summer with the heat and water the straw will decompose and I will use this straw in my garden and flower beds next year.  Then I will get new straw bales next year for my garden and do it all over again.  There will constantly be a supply of rotten straw…which is moldy, slimy gold I tell ya!

I recently read an article in the Costco Connection magazine and it had a great section about “The Straw Bale Solution“.  They claim by planting directly in the straw bale that you will have bigger yield and zero weeding….WHAT!  Zero weeding!  That is my kind of gardening!    I hope you all try this straw bale gardening!!