What's Up With the Bales.....?

I decided to take some close up pictures of the straw bales happenings, since I put in another transplant this morning.

Bottom left are my Adirondack Blue potatoes. They have really begun to sprout already. If you remember from the last post, the potatoes were placed under flakes of straw, not in the bales themselves. I did not dig up the ground (as you can see). I also put in Yukon Golds. They are not sprouting as of yet, however the russets are. Neither are pictured, but done the same as the blues.

Bottom right is the opening in a straw bale that I made for today's transplant, which is a Big Max pumpkin. I started the seed indoors, and the seedling can be seen top right. Top left is the same little guy after it was placed in the straw bale. (This is the seedling I discussed in the last writing. It was started on May 27, and the picture above was how it looked 7 days later.)

In researching straw bale gardening, I found that some people actually cut sections out of the bale for planting. However the bales were loose enough to be able to just separate by hand. I had to put a little effort into it....not much, but I think it was still easier than cutting.

Oh, another fun thing for the day. I picked my first strawberries of the season. VERY sweet!