Using it as mulch, right, rather than in a compost pile? On top the soil around the plants but not right up next to the plant stems? Yeah, if your soil is now warm enough to layer on mulch, it will be good stuff. Hay and straw are some of the best mulches there is. How much composting in place it will do and how much nutrients it may or may not provide will all depend on how "old" it is and what the mix balance is. But by fall you can till it in with no problems. Dave

I've used both straw and hay mulch for years. As mentioned above, the secret is to lay it on thick. If you put it down 6 inches thick in spring, it will be reduced by 80% by late fall. I've never used straw that was seed-free, but it has a lot fewer seeds than hay. The thing is, permanent mulch gardening is something that you need to stick with. If you mulch even one year with hay, you're going to get a million weeds for years thereafter if you don't continue the mulching. I usually just peel the squares off the bale and lay them out like floor tiles. If I have a decent supply of cardboard, I may lay that down first, but again, the secret is to lay it down thick, and keep adding to it as required. I also pile on shredded leaves, pine needles, lawn clippings, whatever I can get my hands on.

Ezzirah, Straw is sprayed with herbicides too. All it takes is a very minute amount of herbicide residue (perhaps as small as one part per billion) on hay, straw, in animal manure from animals that ate the contaminated hay, or compost made from contaminated ingredients to contaminate your soil. Contaminated soil will vary in how long it remains barren and for most gardeners it seems like it takes at least 3 or 4 years before they can grow anything in the garden again other than grasses or grains. The 3 to 4 years of "down time" that most people see is a much longer period than the manufacturer says their research indicates. I've linked a permaculture website that addresses herbicide contamination and the writer shows some of their own plants in soil he or she was testing for contamination, and further down the page describes how the contamination issue affected their plants. The only way to know for sure you have non-contaminated hay or straw is to get it directly from the person who grew it and make sure that it was not sprayed with any of the herbicides known to persist for long periods of time. I only get hay from people I know do not ever, ever, ever spray their fields and even then you run the risk that their next-door neighbor could have sprayed this herbicide and it could have drifted into non-sprayed area. When I buy hay from a feed store, I only buy alfalfa hay and I don't buy straw because the local suppliers cannot tell me if it was sprayed or not. Your local feed store or hay broker may or may not know if their hay or straw was sprayed. Our local feed store sometimes knows and sometimes has no idea. All the herbicides that persist in hay, straw, manure, compost and soil are sprayed to kill broad-leaved weeds in grass and grain crops, along road, railroad and utility line right-of-ways, and even on golf courses. Since alfalfa is not a grass or grain (it is a legume), it cannot be sprayed with those herbicides, so there is not a deadly herbicide residue issue with it. I used to bring in lots of mulch and soil amendments from outside our property, whether they were locally-grown hay or bagged products from a store, but almost everything I use now come from our own property because that's the only way I have of knowing I'm not contaminating my soil with herbicide residue. It takes me so much more time to mow and collect grass clippings to use as mulch than it takes to go to the feed store and buy bales of hay, but at least this way I know I'm not bringing contaminated materials onto our property. Just one bale of contaminated straw or hay or one bag of contaminated manure or compost could destroy your ability to raise non-grass, non-grain crops for years. Everyone who has this happen to them always is shocked and has that "I didn't think this ever would happen to me" attitude, and I understand that, but sadly it has happened to them and it continues to happen. In a very odd and ironic twist, the contaminated compost, manure and mulch issue has hit organic gardeners especially hard despite their efforts to avoid chemicals in the garden. That's because it tends to be organic gardeners who are adding compost and manure to their garden beds, and using hay or straw for mulch. For organic growers who are "certified organic", their certification can be yanked after they've gone to great effort and expense to get it in the first place. The herbicide contamination issue is largely ignored by the media and mostly only discussed after many gardens in one area are wiped out by herbicide contamination. I think that's because it first showed up in the beds of organic gardeners back in the early 2000s when organic gardening was not as popular or as widespread as it is now and organic gardeners still were thought of as a fringe element. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Herbicide Contamination

I could not keep up with the Squash bugs this year. It seems if I got busy and did not attend to them each day that all of a sudden they would multiply exponentially and kill my plants! Dawn I am going to try your suggestions, I think I like the idea of a bait crop. I will try that early and see if I can break the cycle. I also am going to plant less squash and all the squash in one area of the garden, last year I had them in several areas. I would get one spot under control only to find them taking over another area. Mark