Straw Bale Gardening - Part 5

Part 4: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/614124/

Part 3: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/598673/

Part 2: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/590925/

Part 1: http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/584625/


Feel free to add your location by clicking on www.frappr.com/strawbalegardeners



This message was edited Jul 27, 2006 1:03 AM

Thank ya for starting another one.
Kathy

Wanted to be first up! In the immortal words of a new visitor to my straw bale garden "Somebody here likes to can". The tomatoes are loaded with fruit, especially all the Italian type tomatoes like Roma and a gold pear shaped one I can't recall the name of immediately. Can somebody tell me why that would be? The Celebrity, Early Girl and Rutgers have fruit but not like the italian types. I put Tomato-tone from Espoma on a few days ago and sprayed Messenger again last night.

I threw some Sweet 100 seed in some pots a few weeks ago and saw the first blooming flowers yesterday. I finally got them stuck into some of the collapsed bales I hadn't used and they've taken off. Those are for the kids. This is their first garden and they are so excited. We had our first cucumber last night.

And while I'm yakking my esteemed colleague from KY gets there first. Ha!

This message was edited Jul 27, 2006 7:23 AM

This message was edited Jul 27, 2006 7:23 AM

Thanks Kent. That helps.

I am interested in hearing from the ones who are using a drip system to water.

How long?
How often?

I use fish emulsion/compost teas to fertilize so cannot add to drip system - however seems like it would require less fertilizer since it requires less water.

Thanks JimboTN for info on yellow jacket trap.

farming, why can't you use fish emulsion/compost teas in a drip system? I have friends who do.

Well, the bales are getting soft, and the stakes I stuffed into them early in the season are flopping right over with the tomatoes, yoicks!
You can tell it's been years and years and, um, decades nearly, since I last grew tomatoes, and they didn't sprawl all over like this.

So: new stakes (bigger); judicious pruning, and thinning of suckers; and new re-tyin gof things. Notes to self about setting up burly staking and trellising next year, grin! They're full of tomatoes, though.
The zukes have reached the edges of their bales and keep right on going - we missed the first of these by a couple of well-watered days, and wound up with a five-pound monster! Dear and silly gardening friends got married this past Saturday - we tied a big fat bow around it in thick blue lopi yarn and added it to our presents to them, of course. The catering crew about bust a gut laughing, enjoying it.
The cucumbers appeared to be kind of quiet, but there were two nice big slicers stealthily hanging out down underneath the leaves, that came in today.
The gourds have spilled way across the yard, and have reached the back fence, and are thinking about going for the other side of the yard's fence there in the empty back corner. Lots of little egg gourds, but I don't see any swan-neck gourds in there among all their vines and leaves, yet. Hmm.

Today as we weeded and picked things, I decided to take a photo of JUST today's bounty from the garden. Pretty impressive... (no, that's just a three-pound zucchini in this photo. oops. I'm concerned that my judgement on "how big is big?" will be warped by these baseball bat sized ones).

Tonight we add in s'more Dr. Earth fertilizer, and walk the hose around...

Ruth, I think anyone would be proud to show that table, that's really excellent, Just shows what you can do if you've a mind to.

Ruth: belated dittos on the nice display;

All: Last zucchini about ready to come off and then I'm hauling those 2 bales to the mulch pile. 4 squash plants have a few more coming and then those bales are going, too.

Cukes showing some stress from the relentless days of 95+ temps but still doing well for this time of the year. The missus wants to do one more canning and she'll stop at around 90 pints.

Tomatoes doing well and starting to turn. All the peppers are full steam ahead, especially the habaneros. They are pure t loaded. (That's Southern slang for loaded to the max!.)

I still love my Miracle Gro dispenser instead of watering with a 2 gallon can.

A baby rabbit has become fond of my garden because I always seem to rustle him up when I go water.

I'm still pleasantly surprised at how well the okra is standing up firm without being staked. They look twice as big as my neighbor's okra in that red clay he plants in every year.

I'm still preaching up bale gardening, but still get the deer-in-the-headlights look from most until they actually see it in person. They don't believe the photos.

Kent

Kent I just wonder how many days-equivalent you are ahead of us in growing season. My cucurbits just started really producing this week. I'm going to be making pickles next week I bet. I used Burpees 'Bushmaster', a smaller pickling type cuke that is supposed to be more of a bush than a vine - altho its got vines trailing away already. I'm not that crazy about the taste so far - maybe we are picking them too young but they are about 4" long and that was the advertised mature size.

Does anyone know if pickling cukes have a much different flavor than the traditional?

A tomato question - can it get too hot for tomatoes? I'm keeping them watered but no ripe ones yet.

Thanks for the feedback on my "First Fruits" table pile-of-Abundance. A friend who is gardening in her excellent back yard for the first time in long years exclaims that gardens are all about giving one a feeling of abundance. I'd agree they certainly are good exemplars of that quality this year!

More friends up by Mt. Lassen in northern CA are apparently trying a few bales, and enjoying how things are going.

farming, even if you set up a drip without adding the fish-juice emulsion for fear of clogging a line, you can always walk the stuff around and apply it, and then wander back and turn on the water.
Alas, I have no idea how long, how much, not having such a delight set up (our first year in a rented house with a terrific yard; we're happy enough to have this huge splendid garden in!) but I'd probably set one up by the seat of my pants, checking flow rates and adjusting how long things got how wet just by eyeballing it. I save my P=0.001 fussiness for my editing clients and some other art projects I do, not the garden, though, which is my antidote for same, so maybe you want someone else's wooden-nickel's worth.

alyrics, tomatoes can be pretty comfortable with heat, but if you're up over 120° F (move!) they could get into trouble. I'm proofreading over at the Gutenberg Porject and someone's got a treatise on growing tomatoes from about 100 years ago that's just fascinating, and will be worth our looking at once it's through edits, finished and posted. The couple of pages I read are just delightful. Of course if you wanted to help proofread, your might find your way over to volunteer (a page at a time) at http://pgdp.org/

I will try to get an updated photo tomorrow of my bales. We have been eating tomatoes for a couple of weeks now. Those plants are doing very well. Cukes in the bales are still puny, but have a couple small cukes on them. I have ambrosia cantaloupe in bales that is just going crazy now. I've even got softball-sized fruits on them and they are growing fast.

Thought I'd post a few photos from today; the rest are on my diary

Tomatoes almost ready to meet.

Some running beans are going here next year.

Side view of the arch trellis; I picked all the red tomatoes this morning.

I finally had to tie up the okra. Some of them had almost gotten horizontal from a little wind we had last night. The stalks are almost as thick as the tobacco sticks. I love the blooms of an okra. They are beautiful.

Note to self: plant more next year

alyrics, a pickling cuke is just better for pickling than fresh eating, and it's generally meant to be picked young. So its flavor is "greener" or more immature, and the flesh is more dense. But that's good for pickling: you don't want to pickle a large fruit w/ big huge seeds b/c it would tend to be mushy/spongey or at least much more "bendy," as we say. Don't know if that makes sense.

alyrics: not sure about the difference in growing season; as for the "bush" vs "vine" cukes, the ones I planted were the "bush" kind but you saw how they ran all over and off my bales

I picked a 6 gallon bucket full of cukes several days ago and another bucket full this morning and my bride's preparing the last batch of pickles today.

The squash is all gone now. Cukes to follow with the tomatoes and peppers going the long haul.

zeppy: we were online at the same time; since we pickle the "meat" of the cuke, we like them as large as possible; we just have never pickled cukes where you cut them up in round slices.

This message was edited Aug 5, 2006 3:42 PM

Oh, I get it!

We pickle them whole or sliced lengthwise. I should try the chunk way.

Hey! Now I know what to do with the monster cukes my dad blessed me with. I was kinda wondering. I'll chunk them for sweet pickles.

Zeppy thanks for the quick pickle primer. That answers the question. I grew them for pickles anyway. we seem to come and go in waves with pickles but when we're 'on' we go through a lot of pickles. I have my Gramma's recipe for Bread and Butter pickles and that's my favorite. I can buy big jars of dills so cheap at Costco it doesn't seem worth the bother. My cukes are loaded with blossoms so the next couple weeks should give me my pickles. We've eaten a dozen or so already. I do have another question about cucurbits.... When do they stop producing?

Last night we shucked, blanched and froze I think around 20 dozen ears of corn. I'm still finishing beets but I have frozen around 50 pints. I have tomatoes to blanche today and cook for sauce - this from my dads's zone 5a garden, not my 5b. I'm stilllllll waiting.

Okay, I'm impressed you did corn. Next year I'm going to try that... got to get me a pressure canner.

I have a dill recipe that is absolutely to die for. It's from the mother-in-law of a friend, and it's the garlickiest, saltiest, sourest, most dilly pickle I've ever had. You put a grape leaf, a clove of garlic, two peppercorns, and a dill head (NOT seeds) in the brine. They have to sit a couple months before they're really good, but then they're fantastic. When I put them out at a party, they're gone in 15 minutes. But boy do they give you bad breath the next day... :)

corn is easy - all you do is boil it for 3 minutes, put in cold water for 3 minutes and then I prop them up on cookie sheets to finish cooling and to dry - you don't want the water in the freezer bag. Its the shucking that is a lot of work - and trimming etc.

Garlic dills eh? Sounds mouth puckering! I'm the only one who would like them in my fam - but would you send the recipe anyway?

Zeppy, Corn is MUCH easier to freeze than to can, I think it has to be in the canner almost 90 minutes! much easier and tastes just as good, in my opinion, to just pop it in the freezer. :-)

I'd love your dill recipe too! We LOVE dill pickles, and bread and butter, and sweet, and and and..... we just love pickles here! LOL

Alyrics, there is a discussion going on about roasted tomato sauce, roasted in the oven... I'm definitely trying it as soon as I get enough maters do do a batch up. Here is the thread
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/544594/

Thanks Melissa! I've just got enough to do a big pot of fresh sauce for tomorrow but in a few weeks I'd love to try that recipe.

Finally reporting back on my straw bale garden...my tomato plants are HUGE (some have topped 6'!) and are setting LOTS of big, healthy fruit. My main poblem is, I planted the rows too close together (about 2') and now it's a jungle out there. In previous years, my tomatoes never grew taller than about 4' in our nasty clay soil, and they were always spindly. So, I'm a complete convert to straw bale gardening...at least for tomatoes! My dad was very impressed...an impressive situation in and of itself. :)

Hooray :) ,
pam

Pam: Way to go my early-rising, WV friend! Those are the reports I like to hear! Spacing will be corrected next year, I'm sure. Are you using stakes or a trellis for the tomatoes? I can't remember if you mentioned that previously.

Kent

Well, actually it's more like your insomniac WV friend. :) I used stakes this year, but after reading others' posts and seeing how huge my plants grew in the straw bales, I think I'd like to try a trellis system next year. Thanks so much again for starting the DG Straw Bale Gardening Club! :)

pam

Oh there we go...SBGC. Pam you're a genius, it was the perfect name. If everyone else agrees of course. Kent, you're going to have to start your own website.

Got my first tomato last night! a smallish Celebrity.

In effect, I'm a first time tomato grower because I've never had this much success before. YaY! I kept thinking a trellis would be too much trouble but as the heat of summer kicked in, the plants have gotten too big for the stakes I used and I can't keep them tied up. Or else I have to go to metal fence posts next year.

Pam & alyrics: a trellis is definitely the way to go

I like the SBGC slant.

We talked abouth this a ways back, but I had given up on getting an embroidered custom logo with a bale and a plant; too costly, etc.

For a golf cap I thought about a simple slogan: "Bale Gardener" stitched across the front in a nice looking font. That's just enough to get folks asking questions.

Now the SBGC could go on a cap, or something similar.

For a sweat shirt I thought about a simple "I love (where love is in the form of a red heart) Bale Gardening. A take off from the I Love NY shirts you see.

I've been meaning to get a sweat shirt fixed up just to see how it would look.

Kent

You know...... you can get an iron on transfer for just a few dollars at Office Max, JoAnn Fabrics, a craft store, etc. You take a photo from your computer and print it out on any color printer onto the special transfer paper, and then iron it onto a T-Shirt. We could have a photo 'contest' among us to pick out the photo that best captures the spirit of bale gardening. You could do a photo of a pile of tomatoes in front of a straw bale and we could decide on some logo. Or something along those lines.

alyrics: thanks for the tip about the iron on paper from Office Max; now that sounds like a plan; I'll have to check that method out

Well, the cukes have completed their mission; I got 1 final dish pan full and pulled the dying vines up; now I'll just let those bales sit w/out watering and wait until it's time to set out my collards around the first part of September.

Yesterday, the missus put up 10 quarts of tomatoes from my first good harvest.

I'm loving the Cherokee Purple tomatoes. First time for these and they make good sandwiches. So do the German Johnsons.

I finally had to stake my peppers. They were all about to go horizontal.

I also had to prop up my arch trellis. One side was pushing in more than I was comfortable with and I didn't want the wire to bend in the middle. The arch trellis acts like a sail and catches alot of wind because the tomato vines/foliage are so dense.

Okra is still going strong.

Kent

Last week we received 10 big (well, five feet) steel stakes, which pound into the ground, and finally feel like we've got a clue for staking this year's incredible sprawl of tomato vines! next year: trellising, and it gets set up beFORE the plants go in the bales. Wow.
The mystery vine from our friends in Sebastopol is turning out to be a stripey crook-neck thing; there are pumpkins on the volunteers; and we've given the peppers slightly bigger stakes, since they're growing into them. Wonderful things.

SBGC - now that's an idea. I have a button maker, and could do us lapel buttons if someone comes up with artwork. Maybe green letters on a background photo of straw...

Ru: I like the idea of the lettering on a bale; especially as a logo on a cap or shirt; then you could put your CITY and STATE under the bale. I think that would do alot better than trying to put a whole plant in a bale, unless you had a large design for the front or back of a shirt.

Or, you could just have a bale with SBGC spelled out in a circle around the bale.

Once I get final summer vacations and back-to-school activities out of the way, I'll try to work some more on this topic. Anyone else want to try a proto-type?

All: is anyone doing bale gardening with HAY or ALFALFA? I'd like to hear how things are turning out.

Any complaints, praises, or regrets on anything anyone has done or not done in the bales?

Anyone definitely NOT doing this again?

What kind of responses are you getting from your friends and neighbors?

I see we have 30-something posts with almost 400 views! We've got a large audience or a small group of us are doing a lot of viewing!!

Big Red: we haven't heard from you lately.

Melinda in SC: same for you. What's up with your bale garden?

Kent

Hi Kent, been busy canning lately. So far, 40 pints green beans, 110 quarts tomatoes, 18 pints beets and 1 bushel of apples frozen. Carrots are next and it's time to put in my fall broccoli. No more broccoli goes in my bales, my cole crops were an absolute failure in the bales.

My bales are nearly done producing except for few tomatoes, mainly Mexico and Big Red. I have started five more tomato plants in the bales from suckers cut off my Mexico and Big Red plants. They're growing good and just starting to blossom.

Red

I vote for a crop circle cut out in SBGC
Call CNN and point out the gen-u-een alien invasion

I regret not putting up a heavy enough trellis for the tomatoes
But in the end, I laid down heavy cardboard to keep the maters off the ground and it seems to be working ok.
I've had a great time with my kids looking at the Argiope spiders and watering and picking. They think they did everything

Unless people have seen it they don't seem to believe the story, but
I do have a request from someone who does community gardening in the inner city to come look at my bales. I think hers have not done well and from the description I suspect they weren't prepared right.

alyrics: boy, would I love to have Photoshop on my computer. I'd make us a crop circle!

All: I know you're probably getting tired of me talking about Okra, but I'm still amazed at how the plants love that bale. I have grown Okra in years past in my traditional dirt garden, but they never achieved this size or productivity. Of course, with the daily waterings and ample supply of Miracle Gro, everything should do well, right?

I'm 6' tall just to give a size comparison.

By the way, I've had 2 strangers recently say I looked like Robert Duval. What do you think? Do I need to quit my day job and apply as his stunt double, perhaps? :-)

(He had a pretty good fight scene in "The Apostle".)

Big Red: I see I've got some catching up to do on our canning!

(Edited to correct a grammatical error.)

This message was edited Aug 16, 2006 11:07 PM

Zeppy, we really do need the dill recipe!!

I am attaching 3 pictures of my tomatoes, and cukes. The tomatoes are Early Girls and I have never had them this big. The cukes are on a pipe framework with a half a cattle panel. Also a cherry tomato in the middle.

Here is the one with the cukes on the cattle panel. This works wonderful. No weeds, and the cukes are up in the air hanging on the cattle panel.

Jnette: Those Early Girls are packed on those vines. Very nice! Those cattle panels would serve me much better for my arch trellis than the concrete wire I'm using. Much stiffer.

Note to self: about 60 views later and no one says I look like Robert Duval. Keep your day job! Oh, and quit yakking about your okra unless someone asks.

Just got back from 3 days in the Boone/Blowing Rock area of NC. Grandfather Mtn, Linville Falls/Gorge/Caverns, etc. Very nice! Low 70's, no humidity, beautiful scenery.

KR

Veggie gardeners must be too serious. Robert Duval got nuttin on you.. And compare the knowledge bank about tomatoes and straw bales - Commmme On. You're the hands down winner.

My sister just called me from Waterville, TN off I-40 west of Asheville raving about the waterfalls and the hiking.

If Zeppy isn't following this anymore I've got her recipe.