Hay Bale Garden

Trying out hay bale gardening for the first time this year.  You will see strawberries , planted after the conditioning of the  bales.  One reasons for trying this method is to try and prevent the wild rabbits running amuck in the yard from eating all my produce!  Hoping the bales will be tall enough to prevent rabbits from reaching the plants. 

Here I have another experiment with a raised bed garden.  The intent was to build it higher, but as it was time to get the onions in the ground, I just used the blocks I already had available on the farm.  Knowing rabbits do not like onions, I planted them along the inside parameter of the garden thinking they would not go through the onions to get to the other produce.  I was wrong!!  After buying and planting cabbage, broccoli, kale, brussels sprouts and bok choy the rabbits near destroyed all the young plants in less than 24 hours!!  Not to mention nibbling on the sweet peas previously planted in the same garden.  Lesson Learned.

After determining most of the plants nibbled on by the rabbits were going to survive, I decided to plant them in the hay bale garden as well.  I had previously planted seeds of various greens in the bales, which failed to sprout.  This failure left abundant room to transplant the nibbled on plants from the raised bed.  It has been less than a week since the transplant.  The new growth is unbelievable!   You will notice some larger cabbage and brussels on the back row.  There are plants purchased to replace what the little cotton tails had snacked on.