Why NOT???? Sounds like a cool raised bed garden to me. Nancy

I have heard of both square foot gardening and straw bale gardening. I'm leaning more toward sheet mulch gardening, which is essentially the same as lasagna gardening. lasagna gardening offfers the advantages of both straw bale AND square foot gardening, in that you simply layer your organic materials (a little more work than simply cutting holes in straw bales and planting in that, but less work and less traumatic impact on the existing soil biota than tilling and amending as recommended in square foot gardening. Also, like square foot gardening, you can plant quite intensively in a sheet mulch bed, nearly as intensively as in a square foot garden. So, my 1200 square feet of planned sheet mulch beds will be the equivalent of around 2500-3000 square feet of traditional tilled beds, and, when you consider the row spacing needed in a traditional garden, add around 400 square feet more for comparison sake. Trust me, with all the winter sowing I am doing in the next month, I will need every square inch of space! Mark-

Hi! This year I built raised beds. I lined them with cardboard and then a layer of straw. I put good garden soil on top of that, and planted seeds and transplants. My problem is that nothing is growing well. Everything sprouts, grows a bit, and that's it. I read up on straw bale gardening, to see what's up. I never did the 10 day thing with the ammonium nitrate and high nitrogen fertilizer... I'm worried the plants aren't growing because of this. Any suggestions? Is it too late to do something to the straw now? I'd heard straw was good for growing, but I didn't realized you needed to condition it first!

Ah, memories. I did bales on 2 sides in western WA to block wind and they block a little light too, maybe an extra hour-plus in shadow until you get plant height, but that's a nice little microclimate in there for spring, and sounds like a good idea until you get the hang of it and commit, and the bales are mulch and compost when done. Hardware cloth is esp effective against moles IME and easily secured to bales. I'd be interested to see if bales keep out deer, antelope I can see, maybe if you use the short side as height. I can't picture them keeping away pack rats, but the nurserymen should know. You'll have the advantage of starting earlier as the bales are effective shelves to hold clear plastic/row covers - I rolled mine around old 2x4s. Sounds like a good project to exercise both back and brain! Dan