[hermon]

has anyone grown strawberries in straw bales before? or used bales to grow anything in?

[Trillium]

Straw, in itself, has no nutrition for plants whatsoever. If you build a bed using bales as the soil supports, it would work, but, it will attract rodents like crazy and they will literally build condos. You'll need to weigh one idea against the other.

[fatcat1955]

The "old" boy's used to scrape a hole in the bale and fill with manure and urine. Then they planted the Strawbs in the manure. This caused the bale to heat up giving early strawbs.

[diospyros]

You can also place a straw bale with the cut ends of the straw uppermost, wee on it, then a year later you will have compost.  Supposedly.  I'm not sure when you have to stop weeing.

[jezza]

hi when i was at horticultural collage we grew tomatoes and cucumbers on straw bales,they were layed out end to end  round the greenhouse and up each bay ,soaked with nutrients for 2 days then the bales had soil piled on top a foot deep the top leveled off and tomatoes and cucumbers planted ,then we experimented with rockwool slabs laid on the bales four inch square blocks were placed on the slabs cucumber seed was direct sown into the blocks  tomatoes were pricked out  cucumbers germinated in 2 days tomatoes tomatoes grew 3 inches in 2 days when ,when tomatoes and cucumbers had finished a quick crop of strawberries went in when these finished the bales were rotten and spread over the soil and power spaded in,2 crops of lettuce then planted and cycle started again   jezza

[hermon]

thank you all, must admit i'm going off the idea now!