Have you ever tried gardening in a bale of hay? It’s not just a
novelty. It really works.

One day I broke my shovel in my rock-hard soil in
Athens. “That’s it!” I said. “There
has to be a better way!” That’s when I discovered hay bale
gardening and became a
true believer. Here’s how it works.

Start with a bale of hay or wheat straw. Pine straw won’t work.
Bales that have been
sitting out in the weather will give you a head-start, because
they need to rot before
you plant. Fresh bales will require 10 days of pretreatment.

Place the bales in full sun where they can stay all summer,
because once they start to
rot, they’re not very mobile.

Don’t remove the wire or cord — you don’t want the bales to
fall apart. I’ve found that
a stake at both ends will help hold twine-bound bales together
when the twine rots.

Once the bale’s in place, saturate it with water and keep it
wet, watering it once or
twice a day for the next three days.

On the fourth day, apply a half-cup of ammonium nitrate to the
top of the bale. Water
it in well. Repeat this on the fifth and sixth days.

Ammonium nitrate acts as the energy source for microbes to feed
on the straw and
cause it to rot. If you stick your hand a few inches inside the
bale, it should feel very
warm. That’s the heat generated by microbes having a feeding
frenzy.

On day seven, cut back the ammonium nitrate to one-fourth cup
per bale, watered in
thoroughly. Repeat this on days eight and nine.

On the 10th day, apply 1 cup of 10-10-10 fertilizer per bale and
water it in thoroughly.

By day 11, the bale should be ready for planting. Mix topsoil
and rotted cow manure
for a 50-50 mix. Put about 4 inches of this mixture on top of
each bale and moisten it
lightly with a fine water spray.

Transplant tomatoes and peppers right into the bale. Use your
hand to pull apart the
bale and insert their roots. Each bale should accommodate two
tomato or four pepper
plants.

Seed other vegetables, such as cucumbers, squash, beans,
cantaloupe and watermelon,
into the soil mix on top. Three yellow squash, six to eight
cucumber or 12-15 bean
seeds per bale is about the limit.

Don’t plant corn, okra or other tall vegetables in hay bales.
They can’t get firmly
anchored and will fall over.

Over the summer, the bales may need an application of light 10-
10-10 once a month,
depending on the crop. A liquid feed, such as 15-30-15 soluble
fertilizer applied once a
week, will also give excellent results.

You can grow many annual or perennial flowers in hay bales, too.
Combine an upright
flower such as salvia on top with a trailing annual such as
petunia weeping over the
sides. It’s a striking display and a great conversation piece,
too.

Once the gardening season is over, use the hay bales again for
the next crop. Or
recycle them in the compost pile. Or use them as mulch. Nothing
goes to waste.

Hay bale gardening is great for apartment dwellers, too. A half-
dozen bales on the back
patio can keep the family in produce all summer.

They also add a new dimension to raised bed gardening. They can
provide no-stoop
gardening for the elderly or people with physical disabilities.

The technique will fascinate school children. Teachers can
assign teams and have them
treat bales with fertilizer before the school year ends. Let the
bales rot all summer, then
plant them when school resumes.