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Author Topic: Using bad hay bales  (Read 2524 times)

Penninehillbilly

  • Joined Sep 2011
  • West Yorks
Using bad hay bales
« on: October 13, 2012, 05:57:29 pm »
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.

Bumblebear

  • Joined Jun 2012
  • Norfolk
    • http://southwellski.blogspot.co.uk/
Re: Using bad hay bales
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2012, 08:19:40 pm »
What a great idea!

Penninehillbilly

  • Joined Sep 2011
  • West Yorks
Re: Using bad hay bales
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2012, 12:41:38 am »
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'?

jaykay

  • Joined Aug 2012
  • Cumbria/N Yorks border
Re: Using bad hay bales
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2012, 08:59:17 am »
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).

SallyintNorth

  • Joined Feb 2011
  • Cornwall
  • Rarely short of an opinion but I mean well
    • Trelay Cohousing Community
Re: Using bad hay bales
« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2012, 11:04:39 am »
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.

Don't listen to the money men - they know the price of everything and the value of nothing

Live in a cohousing community with small farm for our own use.  Dairy cows (rearing their own calves for beef), pigs, sheep for meat and fleece, ducks and hens for eggs, veg and fruit growing

Penninehillbilly

  • Joined Sep 2011
  • West Yorks
Re: Using bad hay bales
« Reply #5 on: October 15, 2012, 12:29:48 am »
came across this while looking what to plant
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.
 
 

Lesley Silvester

  • Joined Sep 2011
  • Telford
Re: Using bad hay bales
« Reply #6 on: October 15, 2012, 11:07:58 pm »
Looks interesting.

clydesdaleclopper

  • Joined Aug 2009
  • Aberdeenshire
Re: Using bad hay bales
« Reply #7 on: October 15, 2012, 11:44:45 pm »
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.
Our holding has Anglo Nubian and British Toggenburg goats, Gotland sheep, Franconian Geese, Blue Swedish ducks, a whole load of mongrel hens and two semi-feral children.

Womble

  • Joined Mar 2009
  • Stirlingshire, Central Scotland
Re: Using bad hay bales
« Reply #8 on: October 15, 2012, 11:52:17 pm »
Compost them with some manure and grow mushrooms perhaps?  ???
"All fungi are edible. Some fungi are only edible once." -Terry Pratchett

 

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