After thirteen days of conditioning our straw bales, our little plant starts were starting to wilt and just had to go in. Hubs worked late, and I didn't want to leave him out of this fun and family-friendly project so I waited for him to get home from work.
He very kindly stopped by a garden center and checked to see if they had a few other plants that I wanted, and they did! Yay! By the time he got back with the plants, potting and garden soil, it was getting dark outside. Still, it was much cooler than earlier in the day. That was a nice perk! :)
We began by making holes into the straw bale itself. This actually gave us a really good idea of the readiness of each bale, as some spots were easy to dig out, and other spots were hard. Hubs used the spade/planter and I used a weeder, having found it fairly easy to stab down through the composting straw.
The first plant we put in was my cherry tomato, which had begun suffering, as you can see here. We placed it carefully into the hole along with some good quality potting soil. We also put the tomato cage around it before we added more soil to it. This is because winds can really gust in our back yard and I hope to have it pushed in deeply enough that it won't move.
While I was working on the cherry tomato, hubs began digging out a spot for the beefsteak heirloom tomato he'd just brought home.
In the past we have grown cherry tomatoes and hybrid tomatoes in a planter on our balcony. (We didn't have a yard at the time.) I've always hoped for larger tomatoes, and am really, really hoping this is that year!
After planting them with good potting soil and mounding the dirt tightly around them, we added regular garden soil on top. It was nice and warm, and I couldn't help but feel we were putting our babies cozy to bed for the night. lol I would have gone with all potting soil, but I ran out.
You can see here that there is a color difference, and that the plants really did look pretty droopy.
The next morning I was eager to take a picture. This is what the bale garden looks like right now. Next year we will get more complicated and use rebar steaked into the ground and wires across the whole, but for this year we used tomato cages. I am going to have to use extra wire on them as the plants that vine grow out more.
My brother-in-law gave us some tomato plants right around the time we began to condition the bales, so they had spent about 12 days out in their individual potting pods. Thankfully they were still green, so we placed them in by two's. You can see that I hadn't yet picked up the last of the tomato cages. We have since. :)
Here again are my beefsteak (left) and cherry (right) tomato plants. I cannot tell you how I am babying these two! I have such high hopes!
I will be honest though, on this first morning after planting I was worried sick about my little garden and hoping fervently that we see progress and growth instead of slow death.
Here we have cucumbers (left) and pumpkin (right). The cucumber is in a tomato cage that I will be adding/using additional wire where I need to as it grows to help it vine out.
I am still a bit unsure of the pumpkin, but I am eager to learn what I can do to help this little guy out as well. :)
A week before planting I had picked up a little celery start. I was SO excited to have my own celery plant!
After reading about them online and what all it takes to grow them well, I became discouraged. There are a million things that can go wrong. Still, I had paid for the little fellow, so we dug a quick hole by the house and planted him anyway.
The idea is to let nature take it's course. Still, I did want to give him his best shot. I knew that celery likes shade and water, so we put him up close to the house where the only shade in the yard can be found. We also put a lot of pellet fertilizer at the bottom of the hole, and gave him plenty of potting soil around the roots and base before covering over with the original yard dirt.
This isn't a great picture, but you can see the little celery stalks already looking so cute!
You can also tell that my yard needs mowed and trimmed.... but that is another story. Ugh. lol One little stalk is dying because Giraffe forgot that the celery is there and smashed it with the hose the very next day.
Fast forward just four days, and we are seeing which plants will make it and which may not.
Admittedly I should have watered the plants before taking their pictures, but here they are anyway. (This was two days ago already. Time has gotten away from me!)
My droopy little cherry tomato is getting thicker and fuller! Best of all, there are eight little tomatoes showing up at the top of the plant!
Hubs, Giraffe, and myself are beyond excited! Yesterday while we were outside we snapped off the dead branch (why keep it around?), and continued with our watering and fertilizing rituals.
Even Koala baby is excited! She keeps toddling up to the bales (which come about to her armpits) and pointing at them with many exclamations of "Oooooh!" and "Fow-er!" (flower)
The beefsteak tomato has made the most progress, as you can see here. It has bushed out to around twice it's width overall, and has even gained some height. Seriously, I couldn't be happier!!
Keep your fingers crossed, people! We may just end up with some big tomatoes yet! :)
This pumpkin plant is one reason I said that I should have watered the plants before taking the pictures. They are much more perky after a good watering. ;)
Still, I think you can tell that we are already seeing growth here, as well!
Yeah!!
This cucumber could also probably go either way, but the fact is that the little guy is growing! Slow growth, maybe, but it is definitely there!
I hope to get some liquid fish-based fertilizer to put on these sometime over the weekend. I hear it really helps!
These are our broccoli plants. Two of them are presently thriving, and two of them were so brown (the right two) that we just plucked them out yesterday.
I honestly think that this is probably one of the spots in the straw that didn't "feel" ready for planting. We'll keep feeding/fertilizing, and then I hope to put in a watermelon plant.
I have to mention a couple more things before I sign off for today. When we took the dirt off of the bales to condition them, I had already seeded in the beefsteak. They hadn't sprouted though, so I just threw the dirt in (and on top of) the existing strawberry plants in the planter.
Big surprise, we came home Monday night to these babies! lol I wanted beefsteak tomatoes, and now I have too many starts to use!
Another cast-off plant from the first misguided attempt at bale gardening was a pea plant; four, actually.
This little guy survived so we set the tray aside and continued to use plant food. What do you know, the dying original vine sprouted a new one! That new one is growing!!! It was even taller yesterday. We're going to have to figure out what to do for this little guy. lol
So, there you have it. Our straw bale gardening adventure is not just started, we are officially off the ground! Things are planted and growing, with just a few casualties so far. :) Every day we water the plants, and at least every other day we try to soak them with plant food or add fertilizer. Today is the 'every other' day, so they'll be getting another feeding. If everything goes right we will have strawberries, watermelon (yet to be planted), pumpkin, broccoli, cucumbers, sugar snap peas, and a wealth of tomatoes this summer! :) Should that really happen, next year the bale garden will be larger and more goodies will be planted. Let's hear it for urban gardening! haha
He very kindly stopped by a garden center and checked to see if they had a few other plants that I wanted, and they did! Yay! By the time he got back with the plants, potting and garden soil, it was getting dark outside. Still, it was much cooler than earlier in the day. That was a nice perk! :)
We began by making holes into the straw bale itself. This actually gave us a really good idea of the readiness of each bale, as some spots were easy to dig out, and other spots were hard. Hubs used the spade/planter and I used a weeder, having found it fairly easy to stab down through the composting straw.
The first plant we put in was my cherry tomato, which had begun suffering, as you can see here. We placed it carefully into the hole along with some good quality potting soil. We also put the tomato cage around it before we added more soil to it. This is because winds can really gust in our back yard and I hope to have it pushed in deeply enough that it won't move.
While I was working on the cherry tomato, hubs began digging out a spot for the beefsteak heirloom tomato he'd just brought home.
In the past we have grown cherry tomatoes and hybrid tomatoes in a planter on our balcony. (We didn't have a yard at the time.) I've always hoped for larger tomatoes, and am really, really hoping this is that year!
After planting them with good potting soil and mounding the dirt tightly around them, we added regular garden soil on top. It was nice and warm, and I couldn't help but feel we were putting our babies cozy to bed for the night. lol I would have gone with all potting soil, but I ran out.
You can see here that there is a color difference, and that the plants really did look pretty droopy.
The next morning I was eager to take a picture. This is what the bale garden looks like right now. Next year we will get more complicated and use rebar steaked into the ground and wires across the whole, but for this year we used tomato cages. I am going to have to use extra wire on them as the plants that vine grow out more.
My brother-in-law gave us some tomato plants right around the time we began to condition the bales, so they had spent about 12 days out in their individual potting pods. Thankfully they were still green, so we placed them in by two's. You can see that I hadn't yet picked up the last of the tomato cages. We have since. :)
Here again are my beefsteak (left) and cherry (right) tomato plants. I cannot tell you how I am babying these two! I have such high hopes!
I will be honest though, on this first morning after planting I was worried sick about my little garden and hoping fervently that we see progress and growth instead of slow death.
Here we have cucumbers (left) and pumpkin (right). The cucumber is in a tomato cage that I will be adding/using additional wire where I need to as it grows to help it vine out.
I am still a bit unsure of the pumpkin, but I am eager to learn what I can do to help this little guy out as well. :)
A week before planting I had picked up a little celery start. I was SO excited to have my own celery plant!
After reading about them online and what all it takes to grow them well, I became discouraged. There are a million things that can go wrong. Still, I had paid for the little fellow, so we dug a quick hole by the house and planted him anyway.
The idea is to let nature take it's course. Still, I did want to give him his best shot. I knew that celery likes shade and water, so we put him up close to the house where the only shade in the yard can be found. We also put a lot of pellet fertilizer at the bottom of the hole, and gave him plenty of potting soil around the roots and base before covering over with the original yard dirt. This isn't a great picture, but you can see the little celery stalks already looking so cute!
You can also tell that my yard needs mowed and trimmed.... but that is another story. Ugh. lol One little stalk is dying because Giraffe forgot that the celery is there and smashed it with the hose the very next day.
Fast forward just four days, and we are seeing which plants will make it and which may not.
Admittedly I should have watered the plants before taking their pictures, but here they are anyway. (This was two days ago already. Time has gotten away from me!)
My droopy little cherry tomato is getting thicker and fuller! Best of all, there are eight little tomatoes showing up at the top of the plant!
Hubs, Giraffe, and myself are beyond excited! Yesterday while we were outside we snapped off the dead branch (why keep it around?), and continued with our watering and fertilizing rituals.
Even Koala baby is excited! She keeps toddling up to the bales (which come about to her armpits) and pointing at them with many exclamations of "Oooooh!" and "Fow-er!" (flower)
The beefsteak tomato has made the most progress, as you can see here. It has bushed out to around twice it's width overall, and has even gained some height. Seriously, I couldn't be happier!!
Keep your fingers crossed, people! We may just end up with some big tomatoes yet! :)
This pumpkin plant is one reason I said that I should have watered the plants before taking the pictures. They are much more perky after a good watering. ;)
Still, I think you can tell that we are already seeing growth here, as well!
Yeah!!
This cucumber could also probably go either way, but the fact is that the little guy is growing! Slow growth, maybe, but it is definitely there!
I hope to get some liquid fish-based fertilizer to put on these sometime over the weekend. I hear it really helps!
These are our broccoli plants. Two of them are presently thriving, and two of them were so brown (the right two) that we just plucked them out yesterday.
I honestly think that this is probably one of the spots in the straw that didn't "feel" ready for planting. We'll keep feeding/fertilizing, and then I hope to put in a watermelon plant.
Big surprise, we came home Monday night to these babies! lol I wanted beefsteak tomatoes, and now I have too many starts to use!
Another cast-off plant from the first misguided attempt at bale gardening was a pea plant; four, actually.
This little guy survived so we set the tray aside and continued to use plant food. What do you know, the dying original vine sprouted a new one! That new one is growing!!! It was even taller yesterday. We're going to have to figure out what to do for this little guy. lol
So, there you have it. Our straw bale gardening adventure is not just started, we are officially off the ground! Things are planted and growing, with just a few casualties so far. :) Every day we water the plants, and at least every other day we try to soak them with plant food or add fertilizer. Today is the 'every other' day, so they'll be getting another feeding. If everything goes right we will have strawberries, watermelon (yet to be planted), pumpkin, broccoli, cucumbers, sugar snap peas, and a wealth of tomatoes this summer! :) Should that really happen, next year the bale garden will be larger and more goodies will be planted. Let's hear it for urban gardening! haha
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