patterns and spindles

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Straw bale gardening: take away from presentations N2, sprouting bales, contamination

Joel Karsten podcasts references
Next thing that is often mentioned is that the bales do not sprout and there is no diseases in that bale. That one begs the question how hot the inside of the bale was, because disease causing bacteria and fungi will be killed in the hot compost, but does the straw bale really get there? Most of the pictures show the sides of the bales not really decomposing at all... So if those sides did not get hot the life forms (disease causing and not) would be still there, right? Same thing will happen with whatever insects eggs were there on outside of the bales, the eggs will hatch, why not, nothing was there to kill them like hot compost would. Same with the weed seeds, why would they be killed on outside of the bale, esp if one tops those bales with nice 2-3 inches of garden mix... that weed seed will sprout, why not. Here is from the authors blog
Then that would mean under-cooked compost that never has gotten hot enough to kill diseases and weed seeds if there were any. That type of warm temperatures do happen in cold composting lasagna beds, but they take way longer than 12 days to get ready. 
Bottom line here I found blog, book, podcasts of the same person who is the main method promoter contradicting. It does not answer my 'why' questions. He's clearly going for hot compost in the center but at the same time the amount of the results variations he has in the field is blamed on the gardener.

One type of the bale will not sprout broad leaf weeds - the treated bale aka certified weed free straw... The sides of that bale never got hot enough to kill the seeds and force them to lose vitality... Plenty of the pictures of sprouting bales, they sprout what does not react on particular class of herbicides and are grasses like. That's not what a gardener does grow... If that kills thistle, clovers and mustard that kills the tomato and beans and cabbages...
Most pesticides, including herbicides, break down quickly in the composting process. 

Picloram, Clopyralid and Aminopyralid do not. Theseare

    Easily absorbed by plants.
    Remain chemically stable and intact in both live and dead plants.
    Do not breakdown substantially in animal digestive tracts so contaminate manure, urine and bedding with residues.
    Breakdown very slowly in composts and soils with an estimated half life of 1 - 2 years.
    Affect sensitive crops at very low concentrations - 1-3 ppb. 
Names:

    Picloram - sold as Tordon, Access, Surmount, Grazon, and Pathway.

    Clopyralid - sold as Curtail, Confront, Clopyr AG, Lontrel, Stinger, Millennium Ultra, Millenium Ultra Plus, Reclaim, Redeem, Transline.
    Aminopyralid - sold as Milestone, Forefront, Pharaoh, Banish. 
All these will require a license to apply. 

So barley and wheat will sprout, everything else will result in stringy plants.
There is a statement that farmers do not use these days a lot of chemicals on wheat and barley so there is not much of it in straw... I beg the pardon but that is not true. Wheat treated by the end with roundup to dry it is... very much a common thing in conventional crops (see Monsanto and how much of that do they sell)... The method promoter should have stared with USDA organic straw that had no over-spray including dicamba.
The statements that straw now days is coming in pretty much organic condition is simply not true.
If that was true usda organic and not organic feed grains would cost the same and that's not about to happen any time soon at all...

Is the average gardener going to test on say beans with 3 controls and 3 test ones pear each bale in the garden (say of 20 bales, or even 5...) with straw tea for a month is the bail clean or not?
Guess what, the method is marketed as simple to sell the book. My guess is an average gardener would not do that... it's too complicated.


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