Update on my Straw bale Garden

I want to share an update on my straw bale garden experiment.

I hadn't planted anything before I left to go to California last month. I was afraid it was going to be hot and dry and no one to tend to the bales.

Boy was I wrong, we had a record amount of rain and cool weather while I was gone.

My bales were perfect for starting a garden. They were well into the composting phase of their development and ready to plant.

Last week I planted pumpkins, a climbing butternut squash and some cucumbers. I planted vines variety because my bales are next to the fence and I figured I would take advantage of it

As you can see they all came up so beautifully except for some older pumpkin seeds that I went ahead and planted.... being very doubtful they would even come up. 

So I'll need to replant something in that spot

As you can see from this photo I have some weeding to do around my bales. weeds find any crevice to grow.

After I do that, I've decided to plant next bush green beans. I like the variety top crop, which I have been growing for quite a few years now. Very productive, has a long season and usually pretty diseased resistant. The reason why I wanted to try them on the straw bales it because I'm getting tired of bending over and picking green beans which sometimes can take over an hour to do my 18 foot bed.

 I'm hoping production will be just as good with the benefit of not bending over because the plants will now be at waist height.

 I'll definitely let you know how that works out when it comes to harvest time. 

I meant to write this before I had left about the fertilizer I used

I went organic and use blood meal versus chemical fertilizer. Now I brought my blood meal from a feed producer locally and I'm not sure if it was because of the type of blood meal used or what but it stunk bad and it's not just stunk bad it attracted to flys like crazy.

Now if I lived in the suburbs and was going to do this, I'm not sure if I would use blood meal because of the smell and the attraction of flys. I don't think my neighbors would of liked that but seeing how I'm out in the country and it didn't make no difference to me....heck I raise cattle and you know how sweet smelling they are, like flowers, 

Now that it's been awhile there is no smell.