Gardening With Straw Saves Time, Money, and Sanity!
Using straw as mulch in the garden saves money, crops, and sanity. (Note: Straw is not hay.) See the many benefits of mulching with straw bales in the vegetable garden.
No, I鈥檓 not Rumpelstiltskin, the cranky gnome in a Grimm fairy tale; I can鈥檛 spin straw into gold. But straw bales are inexpensive gold for gardens. I only pay $4 a bale, and the straw saves me hours of weeding, watering, and worrying. I get it from a farmer nearby. Numerous garden centers stock straw, too. Bales are huge; one will usually cover the garden. Just be sure that you are buying straw, not hay.
Everything in the vegetable garden is mulched with a 6-inch layer, including blueberries, Alpine strawberries, and cranberries. I use a foot or two of straw atop the potato bed to grow clean potatoes that can be easily harvested. Tubers form in the straw, and crops are always bigger when I use the straw mulch.
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Straw is Not Hay
First, let me explain that straw is not hay. You don鈥檛 want to use hay, as it will cause nightmares and plenty of weed pulling. Hay is a grass that is primarily grown and cut for livestock. It is difficult to cut hay without at least some of the grass going to seed.
Straws are the dry hollow hay stalks remaining after cereal crops such as wheat or barley have been harvested. They contain few or no seed heads, especially when compared to hay鈥 (University of Maryland Extension Service). Straw stalks don鈥檛 compact or mat. They鈥檙e also slow to decompose and don鈥檛 tie up nitrogen or other nutrients in the soil, making the perfect mulch.
Straw Lets You Water Less Often
A thick blanket of straw keeps the moisture in the soil, radically slowing evaporation. Watering the garden once a week will be the norm rather than every day or two. They dry out a lot slower in hot, sunny weather.
If you live in an area of the country experiencing a rainfall shortage this summer or drought, straw mulch is gold! I do. We鈥檝e received only a tenth of normal rainfall and had a huge snow shortage last winter. The ground is so dry that it鈥檚 cracking in spots. But despite high temperatures and a lack of rain, I water the vegetable garden only once a week.
Straw Mulch Reduces Weeds
Straw blocks out the sun, preventing most weeds from germinating and growing. First, remove the weeds from your garden bed. Then, lay down the straw immediately.
If you鈥檝e already seeded your vegetables, don鈥檛 lay straw on top of the seeds or seedlings. But everywhere else, there is exposed ground; lay down a nice thick layer of straw
It will not only keep weeds from growing but also keep the soil moist, soft, and workable.
Straw Mulch Reduces Pests and Diseases
Straw also saves crops like tomatoes, peppers, and squash from developing blossom-end rot and cat-facing, blueberries from shriveling, and sweet peppers from turning hot.
Soil moisture stays even, and calcium can be transferred from the soil to tomatoes easily, preventing diseases.
Straw mulch at the base of tomato and pepper plants also prevents the transfer of soil-borne diseases such as early blight to plant leaves. No water splashes up from the soil to the leaves because the straw absorbs it.
A thick straw mulch also fosters the growth of large pumpkins, winter squash, and watermelons. The mulch provides a clean blanket upon which melons and pumpkins can grow unblemished.
Straw Mulch Increases Nutrients in the Soil
Straw decomposes like any other organic material, but it鈥檚 much slower. As straw rots, it releases nutrients, feeding the plants growing in it. Straw actually makes your garden better. Genius, right?
Have you used straw for mulch? What other materials do you use to hold moisture in and prevent diseases?
Doreen G. Howard
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I have been gardening in straw bales for about 8 years now and it is a fantastic method for small areas and if you are not yet ready commit to a specific area for a garden. I heard about it first on NPR when they interviewed Joel Karsten who wrote a book called 鈥渟traw bale gardens鈥. I have had great results with the method. You do have to be careful with using the straw as mulch the next year, as tomato seeds commonly get in the straw and come up all over the garden. And if you have any blight, it may be best not to use the mulch around the tomatoes the next year.
Now, you just need to include the straw bale method in your garden planner!
Canadian wheat farmers will explain to you that straw is the part of the plant after the seeds have been removed!! this applies to eat barley and rye
I want to new people who are gardening to help understand another part of the "straw" and "hay" issue. "Hay is a type of grass that is grown and dried for cattle livestock feed over the winter months when the pasture grass is not growing because it is too cold or covered with snow. It is stored in barns or sheds, sometimes left covered in nearby fields.
"Straw" is the left over stem from the harvest of wheat, barley, oats and other similar grains. It is a secondary low cost crop that farmers sell after the grains are harvested, stored, or sold as a cash crop. So buy the straw from a local farmer; he /she will appreciate it.
I'm new to gardening and don't have an irrigation system set up, so i'm using a hose with a spray nozzle to water my garden (about 15x15 feet). Is it ok for a layer of straw to get wet while watering the plants, since i don't use drop irrigation? I live in a pretty hot summer climate (90 to 100 easily). Thanks
I can't say enough about the value of salt marsh hay. The seeds cannot germinate without salt water and the hay is covered with trace minerals from the sea. I am fortunate being relatively close to the ocean, even still not many garden centers carry it.
I am amazed that this article did not stress the importance of buying only organic straw. I'm all in favor of the prescribed deep mulch technique (Google "Ruth Stout"), and straw is a great choice for such mulching, but if you use straw from conventional grain fields you could well end up doing far more harm than good. The danger, which has been well-documented for years now, is the newer class of "persistent herbicides," including aminopyralid, clopyralid, aminocyclopyrachlor, fluroxypyr, picloram, and triclopyr. They affect broad-leafed plants (like your garden veggies!) and thus are sprayed onto grass crops (like the grains from which come your straw!) to suppress broad-leafed weed species. The problem is that these chemicals have half-lives of several years, so contaminated straw mulch could be poisoning your crops for a long time to come. Probably not enough to kill them outright, but enough to stunt their growth and leave you wondering why your veggies look so sad. And since the mulch decomposes into the soil (that's kind of the whole point), by the time you realize the problem there will be no remedy other than literally to replace your soil, or to let that land lay fallow for years before returning to it. Neither composting the straw nor feeding it to animals is a solution, as the herbicidal chemicals will pass through unchanged and, in fact, only concentrated.
As I remove the straw after it's killed the grass, there are several animal holes underneath and I am afraid I am going to see a rat! Do rats like straw on the ground like they do in a barn?
Hi Anita,
It’s hard to say for sure what produced the holes in your lawn, but some possibilities are moles, voles, chipmunks, mice, or yes, rats. The size and shape of the hole would help you to identify the critter.
I have purchased straw for the past two years, but there are lots of oat seeds that sprout, which us disapppointing. I has worked well as a grass killer tho, as I am attempting to go grass free.
I've been using straw as mulch on my home garden for about 3 years. This year my seeds didn't sprout. I planted pumpkin and cucumber starts which have now started to turn yellow and wilt. Never had this happen before. Could the straw be changing the ph of my soil?
