How to Use Old Hay or Straw for Garden Greatness

Old hay and straw can be fairly easy to find for those willing to look. People use hay and straw for decorations in the autumn. Many animals get hay or straw for bedding or wintertime nibbles. Many times, hay gets ruined by getting wet. Lots of times plant nurseries will let inquisitive customers clean up broken bales for huge discounts. Hey, let the empty lot next door get a bit too long and chop it down to make a bit of hay.

To the point, all this old hay and straw might not be useful to some, but for us gardeners, it’s something to collect in oodles. Spent straw is a versatile material to have around the veggie patch. Old decomposing bales of hay are great to have around. With a bit of imagination, this trash is a gardening treasure. There are so many ways to put it to good use.

Vegetable Garden Mulch

A lot of people say not to use hay for gardening mulch because it has lots of seeds. There is truth to these, but there are ways to thwart the seeds.

Wet the hay bale, wrap it in an old sheet of plastic, and put that in direct sunlight for a couple of weeks so that it gets hot and kills the sprouted seeds.

Straw isn’t supposed to have seeds, but sometimes it does. Just flip the straw a couple of times, covering up any green sprouting, and it’ll be fine.

Straw Bale Garden Beds

Straw (and hay) bale garden beds are an awesome way to use intact bales. Before planting in the bale, they need to be conditioned, basically kick-starting the decomposition process in the bale. Most people start by adding nitrogen-rich fertilizer to it a few times over a couple of weeks. Urine, compost tea, or a layer of fresh grass clippings.

Top the straw bale with about an inch or two of potting mix or mature compost to direct seed. To put in seedlings, create a small hole in the bale and fill it with a bit of potting mix or mature compost to plant the seedlings.

Insulation from Cold

Both hay and straw are fantastic for insulating. Bales can be put around the base of a greenhouse. The loose straw/hay can be applied as very thick mulch in the autumn so that garden beds with root vegetables like carrots, beets, and so on can be stored in the bed until needed. The loose straw/hay can also be put into a wire cage around cold-sensitive plants and trees to keep them from being damaged by deep freezes.

Temporary Wind Breaks

For cool-weather gardens that need a little reprieve from frosty northern winds, a stack of hay bales on the northern end of the garden bed can work as a temporary wind break to protect plants from both the cold and the wind. Later, these same bales can become mulch or gardens themselves,

Raised Bed Borders

Small hay bales and straw bales can also work as raised bed borders. Just put them together to make the appropriately sized bed and fill the bed with kitchen compost, leaves, and other organic materials through the winter. Let it rest for a few weeks before it’s time to plant in the spring and use both the bales and composted center as a place to plant veggies.

Simple Seating

Gardens need places to sit and places to set harvest baskets. Old hay bales spotted here and there in the garden work as perfect benches and quick work tables for shelling a few peas or what-have-you. Then, they can be cycled through for mulch or compost when the time comes. No need to buy or build something when a bale of straw will do.

The Carbon in Compost

Compost piles need plenty of carbon. Kitchen scraps are not that. Kitchen scraps are nitrogen-rich. Piling up a bunch of nitrogen-rich kitchen scraps alone will just make a slimy, stinky mess. Instead, we need to add just as much volume of carbon-rich material to absorb that nitrogen sludge and become rich compost. Old hay and straw are perfect for this. Just keep a bale or two by the compost pile and cover those kitchen scraps every time they are added to the bin.

In other words, anytime is a great time to get some hay and/or straw bales into the garden. Autumn is especially good for picking up all those ornamental bales that friends have used for Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations.

Related Content:

• How to Plant a Food Garden On Top of Straw Bales
• 7 Things to Do With Compost if You Don’t Garden
• Egg-cellent Insulation: How to Repurpose Egg Trays and More to Keep Your Home Warm and Cozy
• Choosing the Right Mulch for the Garden
• How to Make Instant Garden Beds the Permaculture Way

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