Straw bale growing

My other experiment this year - I got hold of four free straw and hay bales (2 of each) and parked them alongside each other to make a planting stage.

Watered them well, let them rot down a bit and watered them more with nettle tea, coffee grounds and more water. They still look like bales outside but inside they are a nice black composty looking block.

Problem is the plants I have put in so far: sweetpeas, a tomato plant, a couple of corgettes and a row of onion sets - just to see what each plant would do - require loads of water, pretty much 4 daily cans across the 4 bales.

This bed will be for potatoes next year so I will just knock the bales over across the bed and grow the spuds under this as I have done with compost, mowings, manure and straw this year.

Don't think I'll do bales again.

It's interesting how I have actually missed working with soil.

Yes, the bales were heavily watered but of course, the water just drains out of the bottoms of the bales.

I am hoping the bales will be ideal for my sweet potatoes as the inside has rotted down quite well.

I will compare this against one or two planted in compost rich soil.

I have 4 bales in the GH growing 7 tomato plants and 1 cucumber. the plants are in bottomless pots sitting on the bales. The bales themselves sit on plastic gravel trays - any water draining through creates a reservoir.

This is my 4th year using this method (i have never tried hay) and find that once the season gets underway i need to apply 5L of water per day across all 4 bales (ie 5L in total not 4x5L) and that is sufficient, i can even miss two or three days without any wilting but i dont make a habit of that.

I have only had an occasional case of blossom end rot which is caused by erratic watering.

In addition to the 5L of water the 8 plants share 2L of 1% Tomorite every other day applied to the pots.

The theorey is that the plants develop feeding roots in the pots and water specific roots in the straw, the practice was briefly used commercially 50 years ago