(upbeat music) - Well, hello there, and thanks for joining us for another episode of "Mid American Gardener."

I'm your host, Tinisha Spain, and with me today are three of our veteran panelists here to take your questions and show off what they've got going on at their house, what's growing at their house.

So for starters, let's have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit more about their specialty and what they're into.

So Kelly, we will start with you.

- Hello everyone, my name is Kelly Allsup.

I am a University of Illinois Extension horticulture educator based out of Bloomington.

My specialty is integrated pest management, which means I like looking for bugs in your garden, but I like looking for the good ones and the bad ones.

I am passionate about trees, and I love growing my own food.

There you go.

- Okay!

That's it, that's it, that's pretty powerful in itself.

All right, Jennifer.

- Hi, I'm Jen Nelson.

I'm a horticulturalist.

You can find me online at groundedandgrowing.com.

My favorite things to talk about are just anything plants, really, but my favorite things are vegetables and houseplants.

But I love helping people figure out how to tackle the problems that they're seeing in their garden, and so I've never found a plant I didn't like talking about.

- All right (laughs), and last but not least, John.

- Hi, I'm John Bodensteiner, Vermilion County master gardener, and I guess I like a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

I've gotten into, I'm a volunteer teacher at Schlarman high school, so I'm getting into their greenhouse a little bit.

I know the other two have all kinds of experience in greenhouse, and there's something new I'm starting is, and I think we're gonna talk about this in just a few minutes, is straw bale gardening.

- Yeah, so we've kinda hinted at this for a couple of shows.

There are a couple of topics, actually, I wanna circle back to.

It was this one, and what was the other one, Jennifer, earth box?

- Earth boxes.

- Earth box, earth boxes, so we're gonna get back to that, but we've got, like the stars aligned, and we've got the three perfect people to talk about straw bale gardening.

So John, give us a little intro, and then it's kinda neat, like I said, that we've got the folks on the line who can speak to this.

So go with what you've got and a little bit about what it is.

- Okay, well, I was, I just was watching Kelly and the horticulturists on the web, and they were talking about straw bale gardening, and I've been interested in straw bale gardening for many, many years.

Actually, that really started not even with straw bale gardening.

I think a lot of, the other two may have heard of Ruth Stout.

She used to do gardening in her yard, and she would just throw her potatoes in and then throw some hay on top of it.

But that's one thing that we need to talk about is with straw bale, it's not hay, it's straw.

There is a difference between straw and hay.

Straw is, basically it's just dead grain stocks from wheat, barley oats, something like that, where hay is alfalfa and clover and things that they actually feed the cows.

The straw, they use that in the barn yet, but it's more of a bedding.

But for us that have limited space or our ground is not what we want, straw bale gardening is an alternative.

And I know Kelly knows a lot more about this than I do, but I just thought this was something that was so interesting that I've been hauling hay, or I've been hauling straw now to the school, and we're getting set up because the main thing, I guess, one of the biggest challenges is the 12 days prior to planting, and I think Kelly can talk into that a little bit.

- So Kelly, okay, first, we can find a picture and show what one looks like, but what is this type of gardening?

Is it new, and what luck or success have you had with it?

- Like John said, I don't know if it's new because people have been like layering their potatoes and straw forever.

I've never personally done that.

I was just looking to grow some herbs, and I didn't wanna create a bed.

I didn't want a big, huge container of soil, and I actually saw a picture of a program that Jennifer was working on where she had grown some peppers in a straw bale, and I said, "I'm gonna start that."

So straw bale really essentially is kind of like growing your vegetables in a compost pile while it's composting.

So you need to get that straw bale active.

So what we call it, what Joel Karsten calls it, is cooking the bale.

What you're doing is you're adding fertilizer and water during those 12 days, and that fertilizer and water is feeding that bacteria, and that bacteria and even fungi within the straw bale is starting to break that straw down.

Now, after 12 days, you would think it would be hard to plant in a straw bale, but it's not.

It is actually really malleable.

And you know, sometimes I did use a little bit of, a shovel to get my hole within the straw bale, but I was really, really quite surprised how well it broke down within the 12 days.

Now, that's according to temperature, too.

Now, Joel has a specific recipe that he follows.

I never followed that specific recipe.

I just did a combination of water and fertilizer and just made sure I had put three cups of fertilizer per bale throughout the 12 days.

Another thing is when I, like I water one day, and it was kind of like a gallon of water it took to soak the bale, and the next day I would do a liquid feed.

Now, you don't have to do the liquid feed.

You can actually spread the granulars.

Just in my own personal experience, I actually tried to do organic, and I just don't think the organic was high enough in nitrogen to get it to start cooking.

So I probably would double that time for organic fertilizer because it just never got up to the 160 degrees.

Now, I used a thermometer and popped it into the bale, and once it became 160 degrees, I knew I had cooked, but then I wanted it to lower.

That way I could add seeds and add plants.

- Wow, so Jennifer, I'm gonna have you pick it up from here.

So we've got the method, we've got cooking.

So you, when you reach the 160, then what do you do?

You let it cool, I heard Kelly say, and then you actually put the seed in and just treat it like a garden?

- Yeah, my experience, we actually had our bale in a wagon.

It was supposed to be portable for the master gardeners to take to farmers market and show people.

We just kinda used a shovel and just made a little, kind of parted the straw and just stuck the whole root ball in.

I'm not sure if that was exactly how you're, quote, unquote, supposed to do it, but it's what worked for us.

We had a really hard time with the cooking, the cooking part that Kelly's describing.

Looking back at it, it's been awhile since I did it, but I think our location was particularly difficult.

We were trying to do this on the edge of our parking lot.

So we had it in a wagon, and so we had so much reflected heat, and we just couldn't keep that bale wet.

Like we would, I mean, I was still kinda surprised.

Kelly was saying only a gallon was able to saturate her bale.

We would just like poor the hose on it, and we just could not keep it saturated.

And we thought, you know, well, all that straw is just like almost like a soda straw, so it's just pouring right through, and we were doing the fertilizer and everything.

I don't know, you would think that the heat would help cook it and help get all those microbes going, but I think it was too much of a good thing.

And I mean, we got it working, and it wasn't the dramatic, wonderful thing that I've seen other people put together.

Like when I saw Kelly's, after she got it up and running, it looked so much better than what we did.

But I think that just goes to show that even the most novel method is not gonna pan out if you don't have a good spot for it.

And I just think really that spot that we had was not ideal.

It was just, there's a limit on life, (laughs) and you can't have 130 degrees reflecting off blacktop nonstop.

- So can you do this with seeds, or do you guys use nursery plants?

- You can do- - Any experience with seeds?

- You can do both.

You can do either one.

And for certain things, Joel has said that he actually liked doing seeds better than others.

You know, like tomatoes and things like that, he actually liked plants.

And the thing to do is you've gotta get, know what your vegetables want.

Like if they are full sun, you gotta make sure that that bale is going to be in full sun.

And there's, he's got all kinds of different layouts, whether you do one bale, two bales, 10 bales, 15 bales, 25 bales, you wanna have it laid out so that the north side is where you have your tall plants so the sun is still hitting that, and he says to run 'em north and south so that you can have a little bit better.

One, you know, it's kinda detailed.

You know, I just, one little thing that I remember him talking about was use temperate water.

Don't use cold water when you water your bale because it kinda sets the microbes back a little bit when you soak 'em.

- Oh, okay.

- You know, so we're gonna have a large, 55-gallon barrel of water that will be room temperature or that we're gonna with every day for those 12 days to get the microbes to do a little bit better.

But one of the other books is container vegetables.

So if you can grow it in a container, you can probably grow it in a bale.

So but then, you know, he's got, there's a lotta standards.

How many tomatoes can you put in a bale?

How many peppers- - So that's what I was gonna ask, do you still- - How many carrots?

So we saw- - Do the planting distances still apply if you're in a bale?

- Correct, it does, and maybe even a little bit more because, and then you've gotta make sure that you're watering.

A soaker hose is almost a necessity when you're doing that, because like Jennifer said, you know, she had a hard time keeping that bale moist just to get it treated.

Well, once have your plants in there, you can't have your tomatoes going dry.

You're gonna end up with blossom-end rot.

So it's very important that you use a soaker hose rather than an overhead because that's the last thing you wanna do is be getting water on your leaves.

And it's the same thing that you do in your regular garden, only maybe amplified a little bit the problems in the straw bale gardening.

- Yeah, okay.

- So it, you know, it's something I'm going to enjoy.

The kids are really excited about it.

They're picking out their plants.

We've got seeds started.

They're picking out, I ordered, that was one of my other show-and-tells I'll get on later, but they wanted specialty things, and so we've, there's nothing really that you can't plant in a bale that you could plant in your regular garden.

And I know Kelly did flowers, she did vegetables.

You can plant, as some people have had more difficult planting on the side so that you don't have a bad-looking bale, you know, a straw bale sitting in the middle of the cart.

People have put 'em in containers, but drainage is another thing.

You've gotta make sure that you've got it on a good-draining area and a weed barrier underneath so that, you know, we're gonna do ours on concrete, but we're gonna put 'em up on pallets with a metal, a wire cloth- - That's a good idea.

- And still got the bales, or the bales don't fall through and disintegrate.

So there's all kinds a little things that, but this book is, I think anybody that is interested in doing it, you don't have to follow it exactly.

But Joel Karsten is really, he's talked all over the United States, all over the world really, and.

- [Tinisha] Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- Finally, Kelly and Jen, I was gonna ask, where can people, and I'll put some links on our Facebook as well, but where can people learn more about this?

Kelly, I know you gave a talk recently.

Where can folks learn more?

- Yes, I do have a YouTube video out there, University of Illinois Extension, Horticulture, and I've written about it several times, but before we let you go and get off of this subject, I just wanna say that what is the benefit of straw bale gardening?

No weeding, you guys, no weeding.

That's the benefit of straw bale gardening.

And if you love weeding, don't straw bale garden, because it is amazing.

(John laughing) And plus not to mention, you get four more weeks of your growing season by doing a straw bale garden.

A straw bale is cheaper than a bag of good-quality soil.

So this is, really has a lot of benefits, and I've not had the challenge of water.

I've found that some, my straw bales keep really saturated.

So I do think it is location might have something to do with that.

So, yep, go to my blog, "Flowers, Fruits, and Frass."

I've written about it, and I have a YouTube video.

- Okay, Jennifer?

- It might be the quality of the bale, too, because you want it, when you pick up your bales, you want 'em to feel fairly heavy.

You don't want a loose bale where there's pieces missing because you don't want it to fall apart.

And if you do break a string, make sure you repair it right away as tightly as you can, or just discard it and start over with a new bale.

- Okay, Jennifer, do you have any content out there?

- I haven't written anything personally yet, but the book that John was referring to is really good.

And I would just add if people are wanting to do this this spring to get on obtaining that straw bale ASAP.

I have noticed they can be hard to find.

A lotta garden centers sell out of 'em.

If that's the case near you, you might talk to people that have livestock.

Sometimes they have straw that they'll part with.

Depending on the year, sometimes it's harder to get than others, but definitely make that decision and go forward as soon as possible.

- Awesome, I think I might give it a shot this year.

I'm gonna check out some more content and learn a lot more.

But yeah, when I saw the photos, and we're gonna share some of those as well, it just looked really neat, and you can get so many things, you know, the space-saving aspect of it was pretty nice as well, so awesome.

- We're gonna put- - I'm sure we'll talk more on that.

- We're gonna put ours on pallets, too, so that they're up off the cement a little bit.

And like I said, we're gonna put that metal cloth so that it doesn't fall through, and we're hoping that it gives us a little bit of mobility.

The main thing is, you wanna locate your bales, before you start wetting 'em, where you're gonna keep 'em because it's, once they're wet, they are very difficult and heavy to move.

Right now, when they're dry, they're easy.

They're maybe 20 pounds, I don't know, something like that, 20, 25 pounds.

But once they're wet, they can be very, very heavy.

So depending on what you're planning, make sure that you have 'em where you want them, and they're gonna stay there.

And once you're done, you can put the, once they fall apart, you can put the bales in your compost pile, 'cause it's really good, it'd be half composted already, but it's good.

We always need brown matter in the middle of summer, so.

- Mm-hmm, awesome, thank you, guys.

That was great, great discussion, and we're going to keep on those because I know a lotta people are gonna be interested.

So Kelly, we've got a few show-and-tells.

We've got about 10 minutes left, so let's get some of those.

What'd you bring us today?

- What did I bring?

Well, it's the day after Valentine's Day.

Look at these gorgeous roses.

- [Tinisha] Ooh!

- So if you were to take your roses out of your water and you look here, you see all this stuff floating in it, right?

Okay, so all that stuff floating in that water is going to grow bacteria, and that bacteria is going to slowly kill, not slowly, quickly kill these roses.

So what I want you to do is, you know, someone you love got you these beautiful roses.

I want you to change the water every day.

Well, usually a little package of floral food comes with you.

I usually use that one up right away, and I need to make my own.

So I'm going to use one quart of warm water.

I'm going to put one teaspoon of sugar, two teaspoons of lemon juice.

Why lemon juice, Kelly?

Because I am trying to lower the acidity of the water, and it'll actually, the plant, the flowers will take it up.

And one teaspoon of bleach, yes, bleach.

So I'm going to do that in warm water.

The warm water is gonna be taken up by the flowers faster, plus it's gonna dissolve the sugar.

So if you change the water daily and actually make this homemade recipe, you can add five, 10 days onto this arrangement.

Otherwise, they're probably gonna start dying here in three to four days.

Another thing I do is recut the stems, just opening that stem back up so it'll take up that water.

- Great advice, so everybody can get some extra miles on their Valentine's flowers.

Thank you, Kelly.

All right, Jennifer, what do you have for us?

- I brought a, one of the last times I was on, I had all these baby houseplants.

And so I've been slowly potting them up, and this one, I don't know if it'll show up very well, this is called silver squill, and it's related to hyacinth of all things.

But it's, if you lived in a warmer part of the country, you might plant it out as a ground cover, but in Illinois, it's a houseplant.

It's one of those that is considered to be one of the more indestructible houseplants, although I can say I killed it as a new mom 'cause I totally forgot about it for months on end, and I killed it.

But they have kind of this, it looks like a bulb at the base, and that, you can see there's little baby ones kind of coming out, and that's how it will fill up this pot.

But what I love about it is it has really pretty silver foliage, and it's one of those houseplants that you don't have to fight it to get it to bloom.

It will bloom pretty much nonstop, and it has a teeny, tiny white flower, so it's nothing huge, but it's a flower in February.

- [Tinisha] A flower.

(laughs) - (laughs) So that's good.

And it can take a fair amount of neglect.

I will say, absolutely forgetting about it for six months was a bad idea, but you know, it takes very little water.

It's one that you wanna keep on the dry side, and it will reward you with constant flowering.

So it's a winner in my book.

It's also, every part of it's poisonous.

So if you have cats or kids or some that are gonna be chewing on this, I would put it up out of their way.

- Cats or kids, right?

We have to give that disclaimer, especially these days.

(laughs) Okay, John, you've always got interesting show-and-tells.

- Yeah, what I brought today was a bag of vermiculite.

- [Tinisha] Great.

- We have, last time we talked about seed starting and how important it was to use the right seed-starting mix.

and you know, they, it actually says seed starting on it.

And so you need to get that nice and moist and then lay out your seed starting in your trays and lay your seeds out and then cover it with that according to what the package says.

But then they found out that if you put a thin layer of vermiculite over the top of that, it helps regulate the moisture and keeps the fungi from forming at the top where you get damping off in some of your new seedlings.

So we're doing that at the greenhouse also, and I've found that it does seem to help substantially compared to just, and especially don't use garden soil.

I know Kelly and Jennifer know (chuckles), they preach this all the time, but I still see people that have, just go out and dig up some soil, and then they wonder why their plants fail.

And you know, they were looking good, and the next morning they came out, and they were all, it looked like a little guy with an ax came and chopped 'em all down, and they were all laying down dead.

So if you, and this is a big bag of vermiculite.

It comes in very small.

If you're just starting a few seeds, I would just recommend sprinkling and putting it over the top, and you'll find that you probably have a lot less disease.

And it also helps control the moisture-retaining of your plants in the soil, so make sure you have good drainage in your pots.

And those that are doing winter seeding, I know some people are getting into the milk jugs and different containers that they put the seed-starting mix or just potting soil, I found out that potting soil actually is better if you're doing winter seeding.

You're just taking like a milk jug, cutting it in half, putting your potting soil in, and doing some of your heartier seeds, and you cover it, and you put, you take the lid off and put it outside, you tape it together, and then you put it outside, and you forget it until spring and it hardens, those plants get healthier.

Things like that, you don't wanna do tomatoes and peppers like that, but some of your cold crops and things like that.

But this vermiculite really seems to do a trick as far as some of that.

- So Kelly, would you say it's more the weight of garden soil or potting soil?

Why, you know, just for folks who are brand new learning, why do we need to get the seed-starting mix versus what we have laying around or something like that?

- Because I wanna be in full control (laughs) because- - All right.

(laughs) - What happens with garden soil, you know, when you get it wet, it just stays wet.

And I mean, even though you never want seed to dry out too much, it cannot sit in water like that.

And so I think garden soil just holds water a little bit more, and you know, plus it has the clay in it that the roots don't really, you know, if you think about it, you look at the soil-less media at a greenhouse, and you just wanna put your fingers in it, right?

But the dirt in the backyard, it has a lotta clay in it, and so the roots don't really love to expand out in it.

So just that high-quality soil-less mix is better.

I never skimp on quality soil and fertilizer.

I will buy the cheap plants at the box stores like that, but never will I buy cheap soil and cheap fertilizer.

I always go for the top quality.

- All right, and we're gonna end it on that note.

Great advice to live by.

(laughs) You can go cheap on the plants, but certain things you just can't skimp on.

- No.

- I like that, all right, guys, thank you so much for your time and talent.

We're gonna definitely keep in touch with you on the straw bale gardening.

I think that, you know, last year we had so many folks outside for the first time gardening, and now may be a little bit more adventurous.

So I wanna follow this progression with both of you and hopefully get out and get some more on-the-scene sort of shows done and really get into it this year and show people what to do and how to do it.

So thank you so much for coming.

Thanks for bringing your show-and-tells, and thank you for sending in your questions.

And we will post more information about the straw bale gardens on our Facebook.

You can find that information there, and we will see you next time, good night.

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