Free Straw Bale Gardening Workshop

For The Best Tomato Season ever, come to a Free Straw Bale Garden Workshop

Want to learn the secrets about how to grow fabulous homegrown tomatoes and other veggies in your summer garden? Nadine Frush, a straw bale wizard, will be giving a workshop about how to grow a high-yielding garden with great results using straw bales at General Feed & Seed, 100 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz on Saturday, May 12at 11 AM to 12 PM. Just in time for Mother's day, this workshop is free to the general public.

Straw bale gardening is a popular form of container gardening that uses bales of straw as the ‘containers.’ According to Nadine, “Straw bale gardening allows people to get a maximum return on their home garden production and say goodbye to hours of soil preparation, weeding, over-watering, bending, and garden-chomping critters!”

“With straw bales gardens, you don’t have to worry about having great soil. You can also set up the bales in your backyard or on your deck — or even on a cement patio. And, there’s no additional expense to buy large containers. The bales are the container and the soil.”

Preparing a straw bale garden requires ‘conditioning’ the bales for a few weeks before bales can be planted. This essential step is accomplished, in part, by adding nitrogen that accelerates decomposition of the bale.

Nadine explained, “The conditioning process creates an optimum, nutrient-rich rooting environment that is moist and warm for seedlings. This is the perfect time of year to start your straw bale garden and reap wonderful tomatoes, basil, beans, squash, cucumbers over the summer. And it is great for bulbs.”