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 ...

Straw bale gardens are becoming popular with growers plagued with poor soil or limited garden space, said University of Missouri Extension horticulturist David Trinklein. Straw bale gardening combines ...

Would you like to grow your own vegetables this year but simply don’t have a good garden spot? Or perhaps you want to start small and wish to avoid all the digging, weeding, and backbreaking work.

What if you could grow a garden anywhere, even in poor soil or on concrete, and you never have to do any weeding? Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it. But it’s the latest gardening technique that’s ...

Straw Bale Gardens Complete provides an abundance of inspiration, with detailed steps for planning, planting and harvesting a straw bale garden. Joel Karsten inspects tomatoes growing in straw bales.

You may want to pick up wheat straw bales to keep for your vegetable garden next year. Gardeners like Bea Waggener of Newport News are discovering the advantages of gardening in bales, especially ...

Joel Karsten grew up on a Minnesota dairy farm. After earning a horticulture degree at the University of Minnesota, he bought his first house and could hardly wait to sink a tiller into the soil to ...

A few months ago on “You Can Grow It,” garden master Jim Duthie featured a local gardener who was trying a new technique to grow melons and pumpkins in his garden, without any soil. He also introduced ...