The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Goats => Topic started by: Penninehillbilly on October 13, 2012, 05:57:29 pm
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Following on from a previous topic on hay bales -
just come back from a meeting where I was talking to a National Trust person, they are giving bales of hay away, the bad weather has spoiled the bales so they had a display about planting into the bales. just looked it up on the net - 'planting hay bales' and it sounds an interesting idea.
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What a great idea!
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Certainly better than burning if it's possible, presumably if you leave them out over winter there would be no mould to worry about?
then thinking of pouring comfrey or manure liquid over to get them 'working'?
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I've got a whole load of mouldy hay in a barn and started trying to remove it and burn it - oh, it takes forever!
So anything useful like this.....
Most people talk about planting tomatoes when I google planting hay bales. It's generally too short a growing season here to ripen tomatoes. I've never got into vegetable gardening because of the weather here.
So, what could I grow in my (many) bad hay bales, in a cold wet place? (Cumbria, 1000ft).
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Would spuds grow? I went to Potato Day at Garden Organic one year, and remember being told that potatoes actually don't need anything to grow in, there's enough sustenance in the tuber to grow a crop, albeit a smaller one than if the spuds are planted into something more nutritious.
If you pushed spuds into the hay and let them do their work, you'd get some spuds and also quite a lot of reorganisation / composting of the hay, wouldn't you? People used to do it on waste / used straw, I can't see why it wouldn't work on hay.
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came across this while looking what to plant
http://www.growandmake.com/straw_bale_garden (http://www.growandmake.com/straw_bale_garden)
someone actually BOUGHT 2 alfalalfa bales to plant in!
Strawberies sound good, might try and rescue some from the weeds and tubs that have been hopeless this year.
Somewhere I read that root crops didn't do very well in the compressed medium.
I once stuck a couple of spuds in a pile of rotting rushes, they grew but the crop had no real texture, boiled to tastless mush.
Cabbage etc? herbs? courgettes?
I'm quite looking forward to trying this now.
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Looks interesting.
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If you are going to plant into them you need to start the decomposition process first. Best way is to soak them in urine and leave for a few weeks then take out a planting hole, fill this with compost and then plant into it.
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Compost them with some manure and grow mushrooms perhaps? ???