A couple of years ago my sister-in-law told me about straw bale gardening. The idea stuck in my head and I have been wanting to try it ever since.  Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and herbs like parsley, basil and cilantro will work well with this technique. Root vegetables will most likely not work with this method. You have to prep the straw for a few weeks before you plant into it by soaking the bales really well every day. This will cause the interior of the bale to decompose, which raises the temperature and is a perfect environment for heat loving veg. In the second week, start adding a fertilizer to the water when you soak the bales. I filled a 5 gallon bucket and added an appropriate amount of fish emulsion.  I have read that you need anywhere from two to four weeks for this process and I think I ended up with soaking for about three before I got around to planting.

The hardest part of this whole process was digging the hole in the bale. I thought that part would be cake, but it was not cake at all. It was back-breakingly hard and I am going to have to figure out another way to dig the holes if I do this again. Perhaps a saw. After I got the holes dug I added compost, and then the plant. Well see what happens! So far so good. Now I have to figure out how to keep the deer away from them.

I also planted cucumbers (mexican sour gherkins!) in a straw bale and made a cucumber ladder I saw in my Lasagna Gardening book.  As per usual, the fuzzy brown pest was involved and oversaw the whole process.