Ok, so let me say right off the bat that this year I cheated when it came to the straw bales & now I'm paying the price. I made all of these extensive notes and was going to follow a particular conditioning method. And then it all went out the window when I got bogged down with other gardening tasks.
What I was doing was “choosing” to go with a statement that I found on a website that I can't for the life of me find now. I'm fairly certain it was an extension services site & it stated that if you leave the straw bales out all winter – which I did – they would be automatically conditioned and ready to go come planting time in the spring.
I did do a couple of things before planting the seedings – I topped the bales with some compost and I added some granulated organic fertilizer. Then I tried to keep the bales constantly moist - I would stick my finger into a bale & if it felt dry, I watered. I also fed them once per week with fish emulsion.
I had planned on having 5 straw bales, 4 from last year and I was going to purchase another one. Then I realized that the recommended number of plants per bale was 3 for summer squash and 2 for winter squash. Seemed a bit much, considering how large squash are supposed to grow, but since it would make my life easier as I wouldn't need to purchase any more bales, I decided to follow the recommendation.
And these are the bales today:
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Straw Bales Planted with Squash
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Pretty pathetic isn't it. You would think that I had just planted these out as seedlings, but in fact, they were planted out a month ago.