Squash Plants in Hay Bales

After a terrible infestation of squash bugs last year, I have moved the squash patch to the south side of the house (so opposite side) thinking I'd fool them and they wouldn't find me!  Well, things haven't been so bad with squash bugs but the cucumber beetles are still an issue.  Ah well ... I have had many mornings of searching for eggs on the underside of leaves and squishing what I could find and am doing so-so on keeping up with them.  I wanted to share a few photos of how they are looking at this stage. 

The bugs seem to focus in on the flowers and so I tend to ruin the flowers when I'm picking bugs.  That means that there are less flowers to be pollinated and form fruit.  At this point, there are very few squash forming but there is plenty of time left!

After a rain, full of drowning cuke beetles

I don't entirely remember where I planted what, but the majority is winter squash with Tromboncino being the only summer squash.  Although I don't know which is which, the winter squash include at least one each of Japanese Pie, Long Island Cheese, Acorn, Butternut squash and some heirloom pumpkins.

All were started from seed with one exception ... the Marina di Chioggia squash (shown below).  This was purchased at a plant sale and is more advanced than the others.  That is likely why most of the bugs are hanging around that one to the point that I've massacred many of the leaves and pulled off several flowers.

Some plants have gotten off to a slow start ... not sure that one on the left will make it??

And one of the hay bales (hard to see, but the one on the right) is already collapsing so not sure if it wasn't as dense as the others or it is just composting at a faster rate.

Considering I haven't paid a lot of attention to these plants lately, I am pretty happy with the results.  I didn't even bother preparing the bales (so didn't "condition" them) but just plopped the plants into a pile of soil on top of the bales.  Around the third week, I watered in some organic fertilizer.  All in all, I'm pretty happy with the current results but really looking forward to seeing some squash forming soon!

Planting Squash in Hay Bales

I had some struggles last year with the hay bale gardens.  This picture below shows mouse melons in August, a time when they should have been 3 feet tall and filled with mini melon squash.  Instead they did not get bigger than a few inches!

Mousemelons in August

I believe most of the issues were simply with the climate ...I generally plant squash (summer or winter) in bales and they generally like warmer weather which we had none of.  It might also have been that they were straw and I did not use much fertilizer so they may have not had enough nutrition.

Zucchini in hay bale July 2013

This year I have new bales of timothy hay. 

Timothy hay bales

But those straw bales, since the plants did not grow well and therefore didn't break the bale down much, are still standing strong.  So I'll give them another try.  Yesterday I planted 8 sugar pumpkins, 2 into each bale in this rectangular spot. The middle is filled with dirt and will have some type of flower (last year nasturtiums, maybe marigolds this year). 

And I have several more old straw bales still standing from last year.  Good thing as I have LOTS of squash seedlings to get planted this week!

Straw Bale Gardening (and update on collapsed greenhouse)

I was thrilled with the few hay bales that I tried out for gardening last year.  They were amazing for the summer squash and cucumber plants that I grew in them.  This year, however, I was only able to get straw ... but lots of it (and wow, are my shoulders sore from the loading/unloading)!

From what I've read, straw is the more popular choice for gardening in this manner.  But it is devoid of any nutrients.  Hay tends to have more nutrients but also has more seed from which weeds will sprout.  I didn't notice many weeds in the hay bales that I used.  And they must have had some useful nutrients because I added no fertilizer whatsoever and had some beautiful squash plants!  

I really hope the huge plants last year were not beginner's luck because I just bought 21 bales of straw from a local farmer this past weekend.  I told them I would take as many as would fit into my friend's borrowed truck (many thanks to Glen who let me borrow "Marge"); farmer guy then offered to show me how he loads hay into his truck and, boy, did he know how to pack them in (inspired I assume by the extra bucks for each bale - $3 each by the way which is $1 more than last year's hay bales).  I gave 3 to my friend who can use a few to expand his current garden.

And I have a lot of planning to do to figure out how to use the 18 I've kept.  Especially in light of my current situation with the greenhouse having collapsed under the weight of the snow.

I took advantage of the recent thaw to pull more snow off the top to prevent further damage.  Now that some snow has been pulled away, I can see some holes in the back end as well - although it's likely just the plastic pulling away from the frame.

And, of course, there is considerable damage to the back half, not just the front part that has caved in.   But still waiting for the insurance to call back ... no surprise it's taking forever to get a response.  Keeping fingers crossed for good news on that front.

Hay Bale Gardening

I decided to try hay bale (or straw bale) gardening for the same reasons I built raised gardens - partly for aesthetics, but mainly to avoid digging dirt!  Yes, they look kind of neat in the yard, but most important is that there is ZERO digging required.  So for anyone that doesn't have good soil to work with, this might be a good option.  But that doesn't mean these are zero effort (try getting the bits of hay off the interior of my Pontiac Vibe - not really designed for moving hay).

 
Place your bales in position; it is suggested to put them where you want them before you start watering, as once they get waterlogged they are almost immoveable (as with anything I write about here, I'm just a beginner - if you read this and think it's a good idea, I highly recommend you do some research; there were plenty of sites available to help me out). 









And it is apparently a good idea to plant them touching each other so that there is less exposed area on each as they dry out easily.  I placed mine about a foot or so apart as I wanted space for the plants to spread (my plan was to plant pumpkins).

The bales I used were $2 each, and approximately 3' x 2' x 1.5'.

The bales should be placed so that the twine is horizontally around the bale in order to hold it together; it will slowly disintegrate over the season (or sometimes two seasons) and can then be used as mulch.  Had I placed my bale with the twine horizontally I would have had them taller than wide.  So I just wrapped my own twine around the sides so I could set them the way I wanted.





Then I just watered them every day for about 10 days - this was during the hot spell in early May and they are meant to stay constantly moist during this initial prepping period (so that didn't quite happen as it should have); eventually they kind of rot on the inside and start composting themselves.  I was a bit loose with following the instructions; the various websites I researched went into a lot more explanation about what needed to be done, but that's pretty much all I did. 




When ready to plant, I spread the hay apart and pulled out some of the gooey insides to create a 6" inch hole, filled it with dirt and popped in my seedlings.



I ended up not planting pumpkins here, as I created a separate patch further back in the yard (so I could have placed them closer together and avoided dealing with all that grass coming up in between!).  Two of the bales each have 2 marketmore cucumbers and 1 summer squash (mystery pack) and the third bale has two summer squash.




They still look healthy after a couple of weeks!  Hay bales are supposed to require a lot more watering than other gardens, but I have not really noticed that yet since there has been a lot of rain.

The slats set up nearby are from a broken shelving unit in the greenhouse which should help to support the cucumbers when they start to vine.