The side protection of my garden beds rained away

I was not very pleased to see the edges of these garden beds exposed. These are the old hill beds, I flattened out and gave enclosures out of straw. The rain and wind took this straw down and away. The other thing I noticed is the grass that is coming trough everywhere. I am not very happy about that either.

So my son helped me and we cleared the edges, put some cardboard down and divided a thick layer of straw over the cardboard to support the edges.

We took the additional straw from the straw bales that stood at the side as a windbreaker. We took these a little apart last fall, but these did not do much of a breakdown, so enough of the straw is still good to use around these beds.

The first bed is done, 2 more to go, but we will do that on another day.

About the wind breaking straw bales, which are more like a straw hill the kids love to play on, the straw is wet and partially black, but not really decomposing yet.

I was hoping to plant in this in the spring, but there is no soil to plant in. Since it is hard to reach with a tractor I am going to loosen the straw bit by bit with a hayfork. This will take some time, since it is heavy, but there is still some time until spring and if the straw has not decomposed enough by then, I will just make a hole and put some soil in to plant in. This amount of straw does not dry out so easily and make for a nice experiment this summer, since the summers generally tend to get dryer every year.