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.

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 ...

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 ...

It’s fall. All those straw bales you see around can be more than decorative. If you want to start gardening and are faced with rocky soil, hard pan, clay or you’re just tired of bending over, you ...