Terrible garden soil? Or even no soil? No problem. Yes, you can garden! Straw bale gardening uses a bale as the medium in which you plant. You won't have to dig in rocky or hard soil, and it creates ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Joel Karsten has the seeds, fertilizer, soaker hose and straw bales ready to go. Karsten uses the straw instead of soil. He considers growing with straw a breakthrough vegetable growing ...

Local gardeners are experimenting with straw bales, taking advantage of the internal composting to help their garden grow. As a little boy growing up on a Minnesota farm, Joel Karsten wondered why the ...

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My sister Laura and Grandma Josephine tending the chickens on the family farm. Yes, that is a little genuine Minnesota straw in the foreground. Because the straw bale generates heat as the straw ...

Peppers, tomatoes and cabbage getting started, soon after being planted in straw bales. Growing vegetables out of straw bales is a hot topic lately after a web-site and Facebook frenzy led to a book ...

What Is Straw Bale Gardening? Straw bale gardening is an easy way to grow a raised vegetable garden without using any other kind of soil. Seeds are planted in bales that are treated with an organic ...

Using T-posts and wire to support climbing plants such as tomatoes or cucumbers makes a straw bale garden more productive, says Joel Karsten, author of Straw Bale Gardens Complete. Much of the produce ...

In a telephone interview from his home in Roseville, Minn., Karsten explained how he came to share his love and knowledge of straw-bale gardening with the public. He was born and raised on a tree ...

*Refers to the latest 2 years of omaha.com stories. Cancel anytime. Karsten AKRON, Ohio — When Joel Karsten was growing up on a farm in Minnesota, he noticed how lushly weeds grew from rotting bales ...

An interesting way for the family to get involved in gardening is to try a relatively new method of gardening called straw-bale gardening. With straw-bale gardening, you grow your fresh herbs, flowers ...

Get started gardening in driveway planters. Here are easy straw bale gardening instructions to add some food and flowers to your sunny driveway. I was smitten with my driveway last summer. For several ...