F.A. Farm

On January 7th, I had about 110 big round bales dropped on either side of the south driveway, close to where I am breaking new sod. I got them free because the farmer is leasing new land, they have been on the land and waterlogged for two years now, and he just wanted them out of his hair. This seemed like a golden opportunity for me - sheet mulching and compost. I already made compost out of an earlier set of 6 dumptruck loads of hay dropped in 2007 and after two years of composting, the area under the compost pile produced outstanding tomatoes. This project is much bigger and after 12 days, I and one other person have managed to pull apart about half of them. We only work 2 1/2 hours each day and we are both tuckered. He's 67 and I am almost 60, so it is hard for us old geezers to manhandle these huge bales more than a couple of hours each day. After this work and lunch, I usually take a nap.

Biomass is critical to building up the soil. It is good to work a nitrogen source into the hay if possible, and I spread as much coffee grounds on the hay as I can get. However, just as Ruth Stout use to maintain back in the 1970's, "Hay will break down just fine - it just takes longer." As for the weed seeds that are in hay, I don't worry about them. The advantage of getting free biomass far outweighs the incipient weed seeds. I am certainly not going to turn down free hay. Another fun point is that a lot of the hay has already started to decompose, so it will break down fast in the winter rains.

This hay is being put down quite thick to kill the grass between where I am now gardening and the driveway. This will reduce the amount of lawn I have to mow and build up a low spot that has standing water during our wet winters. There are many advantages to sheet mulching and for a little amount of labor in the offseason (Or what laughingly passes for an off season!) I get a great benefit in soil fertility and tilth.