Step 1: Rolling in Hay

We have lots of straw scattered like confetti in the yard... and our friends that stop by are asking about the bales of hay strategically placed in the back corner of the lawn. 

Last week Evelyn traveled to Home Depot to pick up sixteen large bales of hay at $4.50 a piece. After her extensive season of raised garden bed research, she concluded that it would be cheapest to use bales of straw to build a raised garden. After they serve their purpose of being the walls of the garden containing our soil and plants, we can compost the straw for next year. Therefore, we would not be wasting any materials, and they would break down right back into the earth. This was also cheaper and less labor-intensive than building a traditional raised bed wooden box -- you can move the bales around like a little kid's building blocks!

Another cool thing about straw bale gardening: after the straw bales are exposed to precipitation and sun, they begin to decompose and you can plant directly into the bale, maximizing the area available for planting to perhaps include pretty flowers in the edge of your vegetable garden.

We spent approximately $72 to construct our garden beds, compared to the hundreds of dollars we would have spent on wood, nails, etc. to build a traditional raised bed.

The next step was to line the bottom of the hay-lined rectangles with compostables like cardboard, newspaper, etc, in order to keep the so-called grass from our dry lawn from growing up into our garden. We searched our attics for cardboard boxes (inhaled large amounts of dust in the process), in addition to purchasing the Sunday paper, and broke the boxes down, spread the newspaper, and laid them on top of the grass. This completely covered the ground in attempt to keep things growing up from the lawn into our garden.

Thankfully the bales were placed in their semi-permanent fashion before Nashville's "big" Monday snow. We received approximately two to three inches, which immediately called for the city to shut down... again. We all find this amusing, especially the affects of the white fluffy stuff on the already crazy Middle Tennessee drivers.

A view of the straw bale formation blanketed in snow:

 

Below is a closer photo of the gardening area (and two of our wonderful gardeners--our CEO, Evelyn, dons a lovely knit hat with a pink puff on top).   In addition to the cardboard to line the bottom of the beds, we also included twigs and branches that will eventually break down into soil.