Straw Bale Gardens Complete by Joel Karsten
As Heard on The Daily Gardener Podcast:
Straw Bale Gardens Complete by Joel Karsten
In May 1994, Joel Karsten experimented with fifty straw bales on his childhood farm in Southwest Minnesota.
He was trying to develop a new way to grow vegetables at his new home in the Twin Cities, which had terrible clay soil. By June, he realized the plants in the bales were twice as tall as the plants growing in the soil. He kept refining his methods until a local reporter discovered his straw bale gardens in 2007.
Twenty-five years later, Joel Karsten is the recognized pioneer of Straw Bale Gardening, with his first book, an acclaimed NY Times Best Seller, and fans worldwide.
You can hear Joel's incredible story on the Still Growing gardening podcast. I interviewed Joel in three-part episodes, 515 - 517, and you can hear his incredible personal story and his method of growing in straw bales. In episode 556, you can hear about the amazing impact his technique has had around the globe.
Today's featured book, Straw Bale Gardens Complete, contains all of the original information from Joel's first books but goes much deeper. It contains nearly 50 pages of all-new advice and photos on subjects such as growing in a tight urban setting and making your straw bale garden completely organic. There is even information on using straw bale techniques to grow veggies in other organic media for anyone struggling to find straw.
If you've attempted a straw bale garden without using Joel's expertise, you should get his book, or at least listen to those in-depth interviews we did, and give it another go. It's an incredible way to garden in the most challenging situations, and in Cold Climates, you can gain extra growing time—somewhere around 6-8 weeks—in the shoulder seasons of Spring and Fall, which makes it worth doing.
SI HORTUM IN HORTORIA PODCASTA IN BIBLIOTEHCA HABES, NIHIL DEERIT.