That's a good point about the sawdust canceling out the N gained by the manure. I don't really know the science of what is happening, but I am having a much better garden year then ever before (knock on wood), so will repeat the steps next year and hope for a similar result plus manure is cheaper then blood or cotton meal. The stout method does encourage us to lay it on thick enough to cover anything (except whichgrass), so seeds really have never been an issue for me. I even let dandolines go to seed without worry. Stout also encourages you not to worry about weed seeds - and just get the cheapest, most easily available mulch you can find. Some of the manure I put right on top of the hay and then added more hay. In the areas where I put my heat loving crops I remove the mulch in early spring - and then dumped the aged manure directly on the soil. When I put in my starts or seeds, I re-mulch. I'm in upstate NY - so it would take a tank of gasoline to light my rotting mulch on fire. I would guess that dry places would benifit from the mulch even more then I do - nothing looks more harsh then crusty baked naked garden soil to me these days.

Robert, Did exactly that a couple of weekes ago - as soon as Halloween was through. I did get about 10 bales. Not as much as other years. Folks around here are getting wiser all the time... I let them rot for a year, but try to make their 'rotting' period work for me in the gardens, so I decided to extend a flower bed and used the bales on the back side to hold the lasgna contents in place. (This garden slopes down and away.) Behind this I am accumulating a huge mound of leaves.

Organic Farmer Bob typically when you rebuke someone for not knowing about something, you are best not to reviel that you your self know even less. I can imagine lots of home building systems less efficient than stick building, a well built stick house will provide more living space and use fewer resources than a well built standard A-frame, be easier to sheath and take less to heat in a cold climate (thats right, a tall stack like building has a large stack effect, and an A frame has a huge surface area, an a frame with dormers has an unnecessarily complex roof line which leads to leaks and air infiltration). Not all OSB off gases much, not all stick built houses use OSB, no form of alternative building excludes OSB, from an OSB standpoint it doesn't matter what you do the subfloor is still fair game, and probably the area where any offgassing will have the largest effect in any home. Also, where are the toxins coming from in the stick walls that they are not in the cobb walls? As for structural stability there are countless homes of all types that are good in a quake and countless homes of all types that fall like a house of cards. In most cases the strongest house for the money and effort that doesn't use some cheap but very limited resources is going to be either stick or very similar to stick. There are lots of very old stick houses all over Europe as well just FYI, its a safe bet (although I do not have an example that springs to mind) that stick or stick like (say timber frame with stick walls) hoses that are older than 450 still exist, sadly many have been taken down because of the valuable and reusable materials that go into them, a cob house is not reusable nor is a rammed earth house, they just sit and crumble. Also, since fruithack is probably into fruit trees I doubt he is going to rail against forests, and since I am on record all over gardenweb talking about how great trees and forests are I'm going to say it, occasionally clear cutting is the most environmentally friendly thing to do. When Spruce bark beetles started to hit hard here in Alaska the loggers asked to go in and harvest the infested and dying areas. The envirnomental movement stopped them because they were going to clear cut (because it would take too much gasolean and to many lives to try and selectively harvest with how stron spruce branches are) so the beetle infestation was left to go, and each year we loose thousands and thousands of acres of forest to them. had we acted quickly we would have healthy forests and a relatively small patch with all new growth, but no, clear cutting is wrong, so now we have huge swaths of dead forest with no trees growing, fewer logging jobs, and somewhere in the world another forest or plantation was cut to provide the wood that we let rot in the wild, and then a bunch of bunker oil was burned to move that wood to Alaska. Gasolean is also great stuff, with lots of uses.

It's an appropriate experiment, Jali'. I remember that you have used containers for your tomato gardening. I can't see how wrapping "compost" in plastic film would be much different. You will lose the ability to transport them although I have read about a kind of fun way one gardener uses for a very early crop of potatoes. She uses feed bags, compost and a basement which must have large windows. After several months in late winter growing in her basement, she has her husband lug the bags outdoors. Oh yeah, she uses "dear hubby" labor ... I recently had a library book here at home, Straw Bale Gardens, by Joel Karsten. He has a very careful schedule for wetting those bales. They will be enormously heavy! I follow Craig LeHoullier on Twitter and have read his blog now and then over the years. Dr. LeHoullier also grew his tomatoes in containers for many years. Consistent moisture, fertilizer and time will turn that straw into compost. I don't know how quickly or how soon or successfully plants can be grown in it. A careful keeping of records and following a schedule looks like it would be the best path to success. I have been somewhat dismayed that strawbale gardening as a general thing and with somewhat nebulous meaning has been tried so often without good reports of success. Years ago Nichols Garden Nursery had webpages devoted to a trial over several seasons. I checked the other day. Those pages have been taken down. On another forum, a small one, 5 threads have been started on strawbale gardening by 5 different gardeners over the last 7 years. The first 3 gardeners never returned to report any success. Only the gardeners with threads in 2015 and 2016 are still active on the forum. The one last year has changed some things and is doing it again this year. The fifth gardener has been a forum member for years but is already expressing reservations about her first-time attempt. I really want to be encouraging but it must require a practiced gardener's hand. The plastic film would be a new and worthwhile approach. Steve