Ran Out of Patience
So the recommendation from the experts on straw bale gardening is a 10 day regimen of fertilizing and watering prior to planting the bale. But then I have seen youtube videos from folks who were much less patient than me and just added a bunch of fertilizer all at once and planted right away, and they did pretty decent.
But the people who followed the regimen did better than decent, and I decided I would go with the schedule. This meant watering the bales every day. For the 1st 6 days add 3c./bale high all nitrogen fertilizer every other day. I started that with feather meal and then used blood meal* when that ran out. Then days 7-9 you are to put 1.5c./bale of nitrogen and on the 10th day add 1.5c/bale each of high Phosphorus and Potassium fertilizer. At which time you should be ready to plant.
*Just so you know, blood meal is not a good idea if you have dogs. They found and ate half a bag of the stuff. One of mine in particular keeps trying to eat the bales... :(
Today, Sunday, was day 8. I was looking at those lovely little plants just ready to be nestled in those bales. And I thought about the fact that day 10 would fall on Tues and that I would have to either be planting in the morning before work, or wait until next weekend.
Then I thought about those youtube videos and about how I'm on day 8 not day 1 and how the bales were looking and feeling pretty ready to plant. In short, I ran out of patience and I now have a planted straw hay bale garden.
But the people who followed the regimen did better than decent, and I decided I would go with the schedule. This meant watering the bales every day. For the 1st 6 days add 3c./bale high all nitrogen fertilizer every other day. I started that with feather meal and then used blood meal* when that ran out. Then days 7-9 you are to put 1.5c./bale of nitrogen and on the 10th day add 1.5c/bale each of high Phosphorus and Potassium fertilizer. At which time you should be ready to plant.
*Just so you know, blood meal is not a good idea if you have dogs. They found and ate half a bag of the stuff. One of mine in particular keeps trying to eat the bales... :(
Today, Sunday, was day 8. I was looking at those lovely little plants just ready to be nestled in those bales. And I thought about the fact that day 10 would fall on Tues and that I would have to either be planting in the morning before work, or wait until next weekend.
Then I thought about those youtube videos and about how I'm on day 8 not day 1 and how the bales were looking and feeling pretty ready to plant. In short, I ran out of patience and I now have a planted straw hay bale garden.
