Straw Bale Beds, Part Two: Custom "Soil"

Saturday John and I built the other two beds. The problem? John used all of his top-grade compost in building our first bed. So after some consultation with Mittleider and the National Gardening Association's 1986 Gardening: The Complete Guide to Growing America's Favorite Fruits and Vegetables, we used this formula to custom build growing medium for the beds:

1/2" layer of newspaper sheets
2" of shredded newspaper
1 3-cubic-foot bale of peat moss per linear bale of straw
10 pounds of humus/manure mix per bale
3/4 cup lime for per bale
1/2 cup bat guano per bale
1/4 cup kelp meal per bale
1/2 bushel vermiculite per bale (Mittleider likes perlite, too)

And to top it off, I sprinkled about 1/2 cup of Espoma's organic 10-10-10 per bale.

First, we laid down newspaper as a weed barrier:

Then we laid down shredded newspaper (to nom our worm buddies) and wet down the paper.

Then the peat, fluffed into the beds and mixed....

Last but not least the vermiculite (to hold moisture, sweeten the peat, and lighten the mixture for good root development), the lime (again, to sweeten the soil and boost calcium), and the fertilizers. The bat guano is a super boost for flowering and fruiting with its high phosphorus count; the kelp promotes heat and drought resistance as well as strong roots with its potassium load, and the Espoma is a great all-round food that I've been using for seedlings and transplants this year with tremendous success. It smells chocolate-y, too, since it has a fair amount of cocoa nibs in it in addition to many other plant yummies.

And here we are with two more beds ready to go!

Neither one of us like our own picture in this shot, but we each like the other's picture... and we both love the way the bed turned out. Now we just have to wait til the signs are right (June 20 & 21 for our next crop of beans - the signs are in the "arms", or Gemini, and the 22 & 23, when the first quarter moon is in Cancer, one of the most fruitful signs.)

I plan to walk across the street later on and see if I can scrounge up a muck bucket of Davey-droppings. (We are very lucky to live across the street from a llama - and down the street from several horses who are happy to share their bedding with us when they're done with it.) Llama compost is definitely the gold standard for manure in my book - at least that's what the tomatoes tell me. Unfortunately for gardeners, llamas are truly artisans rather than mass-producers, which is one of the reasons they're used as pack animals on sensitive archaeological and environmental sites in the American West.