Susan Moore

After having payed with gardening throughout my life, I finally struck on something that took me beyond the “play” level.

When we moved into our house, the building itself had been fixed up wonderfully. The yard, however, looked like a construction zone. 60+ years of wear and tear, not to mention sloppy clean-up on the house re-do, left us with a large parcel of dirt that seemed to have about as much nutritive value (and a similar consistency) as a block of concrete. One day while I was on Facebook, a straw bale gardening ad came up on the side. Curious, I clicked and looked around. Later I shared it with Chuck – mostly on a lark. But within days we had decided that was the way to go, and we launched our first SB garden with 6 or 8 bales…we really can’t remember.

This past year we planted in 40 bales and harvested all the way up to the first freeze in November (you’ll see the tomatoes we pulled off the vine in one of the pictures). We canned and froze and gave away more vegetables than we would have imagined. We share the wonders of SB gardening in all of our travels, and with friends and coworkers here.

We will have 40 bales again this year, scattered around the front, back, and side yards, It’s fun when drivers slow down or stop in front of the house trying to figure out what is going on. If we have something ready to harvest, I will generally offer them some.

I welcome contact about SB gardening and would be happy to train/mentor people through their first venture. If you are in the Roswell area and would like to visit, drop me a note and we’ll work something out.