You are smart to worry about persistant hericides. I found that out the hard way.

If time permits you can do a search for hay bale gardening and grow either a tomato and or pea plant in a test bale. The true leaves will tell you if there is contamination.

You might do a test on some seedlings if you already have some growing. Soak some of the hay for a day or so and use it to water some fragile little seedling sprouts. See what happens. I would expect no pesticide persistence over two years, but with totally dry conditions, who knows? Both composting and time (especially time) do wonders.

Don't expect minerals from compost, and don't worry about compost recipes; they're a lot of hooey unless you're really trying to get compost fast!

I don't know about following a recipe, but the getting right balance of water, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon into your pile is far from "hooey".

Scott: clopyralid is likely to be the most persistent herbicide that you'll encounter.

If the spoiled hay is a good price, I would use it for sure.

But wouldn't it be considered a green? What do others think?

I love to be as organic as possible - always have felt this way. But it's hard. For instance, I rake leaves out of gutters and what sort of stuff must be on the road getting washed in? I just figure that somehow, eventually, things harmonise and good prevails.

As you say though, there is a possibility that the hay makers didn't spray with herbicide as the 'orrible stuff is expensive. I've never bought any and never want to (herbicide).

Thanks- it is free and she has 50 bails. I will try to test one just to be sure. I have a community garden plot also that if it is good, I could use a lot of it.

i am confused about hay being green or brown... I think it can be both but I don't know what 2 yr old hay would be considered.

As cut hay ages, or any plant for that matter, it looses the chlorophyll that makes it green and it turns brown. This may, or may not, be an indication of poor quality. Spoiled hay will be brown and sometimes have signs of molds and mildews all of which can cause respiratory problems if the spores of these are inhaled. 2 year old hay could be brown even if not spoiled.

kimmq is kimmsr

clopyralid is degraded by sunlight. It may not have degraded in the barn if present. as far as green/brown, hay can not be brown, unless it is like 100% sudangrass. But as it ages it may get to where it is only 25:1.

Not sure where you are but if it's winter, get a bale of that and make a pile with some other greens and browns, asap. I too thought it may be just a mild green at this point. At my house I would use it in winter to layer with kitchen waste. Or maybe you can get some fresh manure. By spring you might have a batch of compost if you turn it a couple times. If the other tests mentioned above pan out OK, then you can try sprouting some seeds in the compost too. If that works out then next summer you can go to town making massive compost piles with it.

I use large amounts of hay as mulch, and then it composts in place. Makes it so I don't have to water (I put it down after a good rain), shields the potatoes from greening, stops the weeds, etc. Google Ruth Stout. If it tests out that it's healthy, you may want to consider it as mulch rather than making it all into compost.

Although HAY is usually full of grass and even weed seeds as opposed to STRAW which is just wheat stalks. So watch out for a pasture sprouting in the garden. :-]

I do the same as elisa. If you, as she suggests, google Ruth Stout, you'd see that the idea is to use VERY thick layers of hay as mulch. I start my layers at around 8" deep. As the year wears on, the mulch degrades. If I don't add more, by the end of summer it's down to almost nothing. I try to add more, but in some beds the plantings are too dense. Often, the seeds will germinate right in the hay and die. Other times, they germinate and have to stretch so far to reach the top of the mulch that they are weak. You can either pull them out easily, or just toss more hay on top.

Point is... who cares if they have seeds? Just keep a thick layer of mulch and you'll never even know it!

Sounds good to me. I have not tried this method myself, just wanted to mention the seed issue. I can see how that would work!

tox, if you get a chance, although her books have some years to them, any gardener can benefit from learning her methods - even how she stumbled into them. Stout was really ahead of her time. I think, even simply for 20th century gardening history, you'd enjoy reading a bit about Ruth Stout.

It might be argued that, without Ruth Stout, even Rodale Press might not have been as influential as it has been to organic gardening... and that's saying something. She, out of shear happenstance, pioneered the later popularity of 'no-till' gardening.

I have a girl crush on Ruth Stout. :)

And an interesting thing about hay vs straw -- in my area, hay fields surround all of us gardeners, so the weeds in it were already in our gardens anyway. But straw comes in from somewhere else, because we don't have any grain fields around. And grain fields are not completely weed free. In my early years of gardening in this area, a friend said to me "every time I use straw in my garden I get a new invasive weed" and she showed me a vining weed that had taken over the fencing around her chickens. I use tons of hay and steer clear of straw!

Yikes, sounds like bindweed maybe. Bad stuff. My sister had that out in NM on the "2-acre goat ranch" she rented a house on. She used to gather it by the armload in her garden area and toss it over the fence to the goats. They'd scramble to scarf it up. Of course she couldn't let em into the garden - they'd eat everything.

Back in the day when I was reading Mother Earth News, I remember either reading a lot about Ruth Stout or articles by/interviews with her personally. It's been awhile though...I will put her on my reading list!