The Best Straw Bales For Gardening of 2025

We are attempting to change our eating and buying habits, so we try to grow our own vegetables as much as we can to ensure we are getting healthy disease-free produce.

Some of us have less than ideal-conditions in which to grow vegetables. We might have limited space, maybe just a patio. But we can still garden if we use straw bales to do it in.

Another great reason to use straw bales for garden beds is the raised beds make gardening easier for those of us who have trouble bending over or use a power mobility device. We can just motor to the garden and along it to either plant or harvest.

I live just north of New Orleans, Louisiana near several swamps. Hurricane Katrina lowered the level of our land even more than it was previous to the storm, so raised bed gardening became commonplace and even easier than pre-hurricane.

Straw bale gardening seemed to be a natural way of raising beds easily and without being as labor-intensive as other types of raised beds.

Where to Start?

First things first: We need straw bales to do straw bale gardening. Straw and hay are not the same. Hay has more grains of wheat and is sold for animals to eat.

Straw is used for bedding material and we hope is relatively free of wheat. The wheat germinates and grows and pretty soon you have a garden full of wheat.

View on Amazon

Don’t get excited. You will never have enough for a loaf of bread. You will have many stalks of wheat that have to be pulled from your bales.

Be sure your supplier understands that you want straw and not hay. I get mine from a local stable. They seem to have more around Halloween because that is when straw bales are used for Halloween decorations.

So decide how big you want your garden. A bale of straw is supposed to be 2’ wide x 4’ long x 2’ high, but you will usually find them to be about 14” wide x 36” long x 18” high. Using those dimensions, figure out how many bales you can or want to have.

How to Arrange the Straw Bales?

I lined mine up against the chain link fence separating the front from the back yard. That way I could use the fence to support pole beans, tomatoes, or even cucumbers.

You can make them in rectangles or a U for easy accessibility. Arrange them so your garden is convenient for you.
I used soaker hoses on a timer to keep the veggies watered.

How to prepare the straw bales?

Straw bale preparation is one of the most important parts of straw bale gardening. Since we are essentially gardening straw as it composts, we have to kick-start it for optimal results. So, arrange your straw bales as you want and start prepping them for planting.

1) Water the bales twice daily for three days.

2) Sprinkle half a cup of ammonium nitrate on each bale for days 4 through 6. Ammonium nitrate can be hard to find because it has been used to make bombs, so sales are restricted.

You have to prove you have a farm in order to buy it. I have used a basic 10-10-10 fertilizer with equal results. Continue to water your bales well.

3) Continue watering daily on days 7 -10, but with only 1/4 cup of 10-10-10 daily.

4) On day 10, sprinkle a cup of any slow-release fertilizer on each bale. You are now ready to plant.

I have deviated from these rules on more than one occasion and have not found my yield diminished, so realize that gardening with straw bales is not an exact science.

Time to Plant the Straw Bales.

Decide what your veggie garden will be. I live in zone 8b, just north of New Orleans, so we can plant all year round.

I have lettuce, chard, broccoli, and spinach in winter. In mid-March, my tomatoes, beans, okra, melons, and eggplant go in.

You can see last winter’s lettuce just ready to pick. And the eggplant just starting to head for the sky.

If you are planting seeds, just poke them in the bales. If you are planting transplants, use your hand trowel to make a slit in the bale and slide the transplant into it.

One caution: Root vegetables do not grow in straw bales, so if you are growing carrots, turnips, or beets, you have to grow them in the soil.

I run my soaker hose daily for 10 minutes and watch my vegetables grow. Weeds are pretty much nonexistent, so garden maintenance is low.

Straw bale gardening is perfect for me in a sub-tropical climate. It would work well in a short growing season as well because the straw bales are warm the moment the composting begins and the vegetables love that.

The Harvest

You will find your vegetables ready to harvest a few days earlier than when planting in soil. Be ready for a big harvest. And be more than ready to freeze or can or cook your fresh-from-the-garden goodness.

Now What?

You have harvested your vegetables and your straw bales are almost gone, having fully composted. I move what is left of mine into raised beds of the finest garden soil ever and plant root veggies in it or any other vegetables that are in season.

And while that is happening, the supplier’s truck is pulling up with another year’s worth of straw bales for me to start seasoning.