312. No more weeding! | Straw Bale Garden Club | Joel Karsten | Roseville, MN

https://www.strawbalegardenclub.com/

joel@strawbalegardens.com

https://www.facebook.com/learntogrowastrawbalegarden

800-901-9902 • 651-470-2096​

Minnesota, Roseville Minn- St Paul

Tell us a little about yourself.

12 days straight. I'm 3/4 of the way through a paitn job.

Roseville, MN between St. Paul

Tuesday March 24, 2020! The beginning of a crazy time! We are on spring break so I hope youare getting outdoors. HEre's Joel Karsten from stra balegardening

I'm in Minnnesota

I grew up in Southern Minnesota on a crop and dairy farm

grew up on a farm

moved to the city in college

Was gonna go back to the farm but I met a girl, never made it back to the farm

• author
• writer
• speaker
• gardener
• involved in several community gardens

travel around esp. in the winter and spring speaking at home and garden shows here in the US and some in Europe as well about

the straw bale garden method

29 springs

Where do you want to start Pioniering this method, one thing my shuanbend who grew up on a ranch is there is a difference btwetn straw and hay.

straw is what remains cereal grains are harvested like

Wheats and oatmeal

bale up the stalks

bedding for livestock

has hollow stalks

stems are hollow

• hold air
• acts like insulation

livestock can lay on the bed of straw has this amazing path to suck up and hold on to moisture

that’s what makes it so good at holding on to large capacity moisture inside a bale which will hold 5 gallons of water

acts as a reservoir for urine for

son or pitchfork in the manure spreader so it's like a diaper for livestock

hay is food ~ Fodder

if you say I’m feeding my dairy cows a hay bale that usually means

alfalfa clover

if your are feeding horses it could mean alfalfa or clover but it could be grass hay

bale up grass that has seed heads

nutritional value

alfalfa has lots of proteins so it's a very valuable crop it's easy to grow

grow it to bale it and feed it to livestock

not a byproduct of oats or wheat

straw is a by-proudct

reasons you grow hay is to feed it to livestrock

• more expensive
• heavier
• has a lot of protein in it

protein breaks down into the

could use a hay bale but it's

• more expensive
• breaks down quicker
• doesn't hold moisture as well

hay bale you only get one seasons of growth

he uses it mostly for mulch, he says you get weed seeds in the garden

the if

depends on when you cut the crop when you get to

3 times

4 times

2 times

cut when you get to 1/10th flower so when one in ten plants has a flower with seeds are mature

weeds that have mature seeds

hopefully not too many weeds

if you are balling like grass hay usually it depends becuase if you cut it a couple of times a year the seed has won’t mature

If you don't cut it at all and you just cut it in the fall and bale your ditch grass, that could have all kinds of seeds in it

sprouting standpoint

depends

sometimes same with straw if you get a really good combine that gets all seeds off when harvesting but if you have a combine that is not adjusted right you can get a bale of straw that has lots of seeds in it too

happens early in the season

prepping the bales getting to plant

spray with a little vinegar and knock them back, then you don't have to deal with the weeds

delights of straw bale gardening is you don't have to deal with weeds

How does somebody...