Hay Bale Gardening Growing

July Progress of the Garden

It's almost the end of July and the hay bale garden is starting to produce some harvest.

The plants are some heritage tomatoes, three different kinds of bell peppers and four cucumber plants planted two to a hill.

I also sprinkled some seeds on the top of the bales but they didn't do so well in our first heat wave.

As I've used a fence to protect the plants from those pesky deer, it makes it super easy to train the plants against it - here I've used a short length of soaker hose, but a slender flexible twig works just as well.

Make your own DIY Tomato Cage

This is my most common selection of plants so I can have a Greek salad made with fresh organic vegetables. The high point of my summer is enjoying a salad for dinner - every night!

The trick of getting some delicious vegetables is constant attention to watering.

Twice a day I make the trek with a can of water from the rain barrel so they get one gallon of water in the morning and in the evening, whether they need it or not.

I also have a barrel with a soaker hose to drip water steadily in really hot periods.

For fertilizer, I've only applied compost tea once because the leaves of one of the pepper plants were getting chlorotic - other than that, they are getting their nutrients right out of the slowly decomposing bale.

Hay Bale Gardening Pest Control

As with any garden, pest control is important. There were two greedy caterpillers on the tiny cabbage seedling. Can you spot them?

Other pests include flea beetles and grasshoppers.

Reemay crop cover helps to prevent lots of issues with insects by keeping them out entirely, but the crops depend on being pollinated by bees or other pollinators to produce fruit. It's a fine line.

Now the harvest is started, it will continue until mid fall if I keep the watering up. Potentially I could get a lot of produce from just a few hay bales. I'm hooked on this method of growing vegetables.