Sunday April 28
Chia Pet Sighting...Yes one of the bales started sprouting little green shoots.  Shoot!  So much for no weeds, all because we didn't know to ask for the right kind of bales.  Not to panic, it's in the book.  Page 95: what to do if you bought the wrong bales.  He recommends using full strength vinegar with a drop of dish soap to kill the shoots.  So I put it in a spray bottle and blasted those babies.  We'll see how it works.  On a lighter note, the temp inside the bales was 100 degrees today!  We are cooking compost now!  All we needed was mother nature to throw in two 70 degree days (on a weekend no less!)  We're currently on day 9. In theory we can start planting on day 12, but it sounds like our brief warm-up will have a relapse into the 40's (I know, it's killing me).  At least we were very productive with our nice days; got the patio furniture painted and pulled out the overgrown bushes in front.  Unfortunately, that one will be an ongoing project.  Getting the stumps out: Scott 0. stumps:1

Tomorrow is day 10, fertilize with 10-10-10 (need to get some phosphorus and potassium worked in).

(photo of the chia pet in the making)

One more thing:  Scott says since I went and brought up his little "procedure", I should at least follow up and say he is fine.  His awesome nurse showed me the pictures of his "inner beauty".  He was totally out and didn't feel a thing (unlike me--I swear I was high).

April 24
Conditioning Day #5.  We're getting into a comfortable habit of feeding the bales.  I'm usually a stickler for following directions, but they did not get warm water today.  So, we've noticed that the birds have an unusually high interest in the bales.  Ever the optimist, I just assumed they were gathering nesting materials (of course there's enough materials for several pterodactyl nests).  Scott had to burst my bubble by suggesting that they may be finding seeds. Seeds you say?  But that's why we have STRAW, not hay, right?  Ah, but there it is on page 42 of the book: ""Make sure you get 'harvested' straw bales.  In rare circumstances the straw gets cut and baled without having the seed heads harvested, which means the entire bale would sprout and grow 'hair' and you would have a Chia pet..."  Did we ask for "harvested" bales?  We did not.  Oops.  So perhaps not the weed-free experience I'd hoped for!  Live and learn.  Oh, by the way, the internal temp of the bales is 68 degrees (compared to ambient air temp of about 45), so our bacteria are cooking!

April 22
Correction--the REAL Earth Day today!  Day 3 conditioning: Bales fertilized with 1/2 cup per bale, followed by water from our rain barrel, which is working out great, I'm pleased to say.  I think I'm supposed to use warm water by day 6. Not sure how that's going to happen (I'm not carrying it from the house).  Mother Nature, care to help me out here?

OK, I took a little heat on the colonoscopy subject.  In my defense, I'm a health care worker.  There's no body part, or product-of-body-parts discussions that have ever been off limits in my home.  Besides, I pride myself on promoting wellness.  So in honor of niece Anngi and friend Marie, people do yourself a favor and get screened!  There.

April 21, 2013
Earth Day.  Ah, yes, mother nature continues to vex.  After a pleasant, sunny 50 degree day yesterday (downright balmy this year), today we awoke to clouds, damp and flurries again.  Today's directions for the bale are just to water to saturation.  We decide to hold off, thinking this may be provided for us.

So I was thinking, maybe I should discuss the reasons we decided to garden this way.  First and foremost (for me), is that the straw bales will provide a raised bed.  I love my new knees, but squatting just isn't going to happen.  Neck and neck with no squatting is no weeding.  I'm taking this Joel Karsten guy at his word, as that was always the worst part of gardening.  I didn't mind quite as much in the spring when the weather is mild and I'm looking for a reason to be outside, but once full blown heat and humidity and MOSQUITOES hit, my determination wanes.  We did consider building a raised bed, but that's just the problem: we'd have to build it.  I have a wonderful husband, but being "handy" was never one of his finer traits.  So the cost of each straw bale was $4-- That's it, no materials, wood or tools needed.  The bales weighed about 50 lbs, and Scott was able to unload them from the truck without much difficulty (now that they're saturated, they weigh considerably more--so make sure when you unload them that they'll be close to your final destination).  Another plus is that at the end of the season, there's nothing to put away and store for the winter.  The straw will just go to the compost pile. Done. And apparently it will provide great soil for my pots next year.  We've tried putting tomatoes in the yard, but always got some kind of blight that was apparently in the soil.  We moved them to containers the past couple of years with some success.  I'm hoping for better production this year and don't even have to buy any new pots (my big terra cottas cracked over the winter).

So while the weather did not inspire us to do any outside work today, I had a great morning just goofing off.  I read the newspaper, listened to my Spotify music, read a chapter in my book, played my uke, checked in on Facebook, threw in some laundry, cleaned up breakfast dishes, listened to NPR and rode my stationary bike while watching "House Hunters" re-runs.  Scott, on the other hand, is no good at goofing off.  Poor guy was like a caged tiger: pacing, lost, distracted.  I finally told him to think of something he wanted to do when, obviously desperate, he plopped down to watch HGTV with me.  Since the only moisture we'd received so far today was in the form of snow, which has since melted, he decided to go water the bales.  They're only fertilized every other day through day 6, so it only took 5 minutes today.  He finally decided to start planning his "last supper".  His routine colonoscopy (yes, he's late) is Tuesday, so tomorrow he starts his liquid diet.  We stopped downtown at the Food Co-op and found some live music at the Root Note.  We made a couple of other stops.  He decided on "comfort food": Meatloaf and mashed potatoes.  I've already forgotten how limited the pre-procedure diet is--no nuts, corn, peas, beans, multi-grain products, fruit or vegetable skins.  He just discovered what I'm writing and wonders how in the world that topic made it to our garden blog.  I digress (but won't delete).  I will stop here for the day, though.

Conditioning Day #1

April 20, 2013
Still haven't hit 60 degrees this year, and it was snowing just yesterday.  BUT today dawned sunny if not warm.  Time to condition the bales!  I looked out at them before breakfast today, and saw I had a furry little helper (just hope he doesn't plan to live here...)

Scott had all the bales moved by the time I got back from the "Y".  We decided to keep them right on the patio.  The biggest reason is they'll be right outside our door, so it will be much easier to tend to and water the plants.  Another reason is that if they're in the grass, gophers can tunnel up under and into them, and it also puts them a little further from the deer

.  We may regret this if they fall apart and make a mess all over the patio, but hey, live and learn! 

We read our directions from the book, spread a 1/2 cup of fertilizer on each bale (20-0-4 lawn fertilizer), then watered them thoroughly with rain water (it's supposed to be warm, we had to break a thin cover of ice in the bucket--but Layla enjoyed the fresh ice water!).  So the conditioning process begins.

Scott also brought up a water softener tank to be our new rain barrel. Is it possible we could be planting in 2 weeks?  I'm afraid we're going to skip spring this year and jump to the 90's :(

April 1, 2013
You thought we'd have spring by now? April Fools!  We went to Minneapolis this weekend to visit Andrew and Anya.  We met them at Guerten's Greenhouse in Inver Grove.  At least it felt like spring there!  The sun was shining and it was 70 degrees in the greenhouse.  What a selection of plants and seeds.  Since it's way to cold to think about plants yet, we focused on the seeds.  This is what we bought: Canna bulbs and 2 kinds of zinnias (my bales must also be pretty!), 2 kinds of leaf lettuce, swiss chard (never had it before), green and wax beans, carnival blend (read "multi-colored") carrots, radishes (don't even know if I like them), gourmet blend (read "multi-colored") beets, and sweet cherry blend peppers.  Hope there's enough room in my 6 bales for everything I want.  I MUST have room for strawberries too!  We bought our fertilizer to start conditioning the bales, but mother nature's lesson this year is patience...

Day 1. March 24, 2013

Less than auspicious beginning. Wanted to go yesterday when the sun was shining brightly (on the snow), but I was down for the count with a headache. But you know me, when I'm on a mission, gotta finish... So today, despite the headache hangover the gray cold skies and the flurries, we set off to start our garden! Turns out the guy with the bales lived in the middle of nowhere, far from the “Brownsville area” he advertised. We lost the paved roads at least 10 miles beyond Brownsville. Thank goodness it was Scott's work truck that got covered in the mud and the muck. Friendly guy, said he'd “never heard of such a thing”. I had my book and showed him the pictures. He just smiled at this city girl. Got the bales home in one piece, but Scott hyperextended his thumb unloading them, and wasn't too happy about his mess of a truck. I hope all our tasty veggies and beautiful flowers will make this worth it!

I should back up and say that it was just last Saturday as I was lying in bed that I heard the program (http://strawbalegardens.com/ ) on WPR. I went and ordered the book (Straw Bale Gardens by Joel Karsten) from Amazon, got it Thursday, and I am raring to go! Now if only mother nature would give us a sign that she hasn't forgotten spring this year...