Tag: Straw mulch

Have you started your preparations for the new garden year already?

We have with seeds, seed potatoes, onion & garlic sets and a big pile of soil

So let’s get started with preparing the site where we want to put new raised beds in. We took out a rest of an old sand heap and divided the sand in some holes around it. Also a hill bed from last year we took out and brought the compost soil to our large straw bed to expand this. We found a lot of good potatoes in this compost soil. We had not planted these; these potatoes grew out of volunteer plants and were enough for 3 meals for us.

After that my husband went over the site with the tractor and meadow train to even the ground.

Now we can start building the raised beds. The raised beds are made out of Larchwood life edge boards.

We have one bed to put between two existing beds what made filling it a bit more hand work, but the other raised beds are filled with the wheel loader directly after being put into place. This makes it a lot easier, because all we need to do is divide the soil.

On top of the soil comes a thick layer of straw. We have straw bales as a wind barrier at the short side of the Tiny House; one of which the dogs destroyed the netting keeping it together. We took out this bale with the wheel loader and put it closer to the beds, to divide it over the beds more easy.

Also I put a thermometer in one of the beds to check the temperature. I have read that potatoes can go into the ground as soon as the soil reaches a temperature of 10°C. At the moment we are at 3°C, so I think it will take a wile before we can get started with planting and sowing.

At the moment we are at 6 plant beds. The first 3 beds are one for each child, who also love gardening, especially harvesting. Wherewith we are not done jet. We will be putting up a lot more plant beds. We also want to plant berry bushes and some more fruit trees, but that is for a next time.

My greenhouse is not really a house, but only a roof. One corner sagged a bit, so we lifted it with the wheel loader and put a small beam under need. A long the entire side we put additional soil to stabilise the side and prevent it from sliding of. We covered the soil with straw.

Beside the greenhouse roof was a big pile of straw, partially rotten and sagged in. We used this straw and also divide it in and around the greenhouse roof. The old mulch layer was very broken down and hardly covered the soil any more. The straw was ratter wet and fixed which made it hard and heavy to loosen. Luckily my husband could make piles of the straw in and around the greenhouse roof with the wheel loader, which made it a lot easier. We will see if it was a good idea or not to use this partially rotten straw, but if necessary we can put another layer of good straw over it later.

Very much to my liking we found a lot of earthworms.

Next thing to do is dividing the compost soil next to the straw bed. I had a small very busy helper. We found a lot of grassroots and other weeds to sort out. Also I forgot to put cardboard under need the soil again. We will leave the soil uncovered for now and rake trough every few days. Hopefully the exposed roots will dry out and we will not end up with a bed full of grass and weeds. After a few weeks we will cover the soil with a thick layer of hay. I hope this will be enough to suppress the weeds from below.

The preparations for our garden year are not finished jet, but we made a good start and hopefully have everything in place before the season really starts.

Finally covering the last plant beds with straw

Will the garlic grow this year?

Finally we made it to cover our plant beds with straw. I had 3 byssi helpers and the job was quickly done. Hopefully the garlic I planted did not take damage of the frost without the protection of mulch. The other plants do not necessarily need the protection against the cold, but I like to cover the ground and keep the moisture in the soil this way. This is mainly in the summertime important, because the sun can really burn although we are not in a Mediterranean climate. We will see what the beds do this year.

Up-Date on our late potato harvest

Finishing up the last bed with straw and finding a decomposed straw bale

Finally we found the time to cover the last bed with straw. We divided a complete straw round bale over the bed, so the bed is nicely covered and ready for the winter. Our two older kids where very good helpers and my husband lend us a hand as well.

We had to put a protection of some kind around the beds, because the dogs kept digging in them. We have an electric fence we set up around the bed, but without putting power on it. The visible fencing is enough to keep the dogs out.

These 3 beds are ready for winter

After that we wanted to cover the plant beds beside our fence we had not covered yet. Therefore my husband wanted to pick up an older straw bale, which was sitting up right since last year, to bring it to the beds with the tractor. This straw bale fell apart, because it was decomposed completely.

The decomposed straw bale with straw bales sitting up right in the background

Partly we had set some straw bales on a flat side (which you normally do not do) to use them as a windbreaker. What happens is that the rain soaks into the straw bale this way and the straw will decompose. We did not expected that it would decompose this quickly. This was also not visible on the outside. Actually this is just what we where looking for when we started pressing straw. We can buy straw directly from the field. We just need to press it and bring it home. So this way we can get mulch relatively cheap with the idea to compost the straw for soil to build up our property. Since we have little soil and mainly rubble on our property.

Straw bale planted with different salad and herbs

Also I had planted on top of some straw bales last season. I put a layer of soil in the middle to plant in. What I found was a big problem with water. I had 2 straw bales sitting in the sun al day. These bales I could water al day long. I gave up on these. I had one straw bale sitting in the shade from noon. This one did better. I had cucumbers in there and they grew, but it still was not very good.

Straw bale planted with cucumbers

I think it was too early to use the straw bales this way. The water leaks out to quickly when the straw is not decomposing jet. Probably it will give a better result when I would use the same straw bales next growing season. I will try it out and will share with you.

Now getting back to the theme we had. We have to see what we can find to cover the beds beside our fence, since we have used up our last straw bales for windbreakers. Maybe our pile of straw still has something usable. We will find out another day.