- This straw mulch right here,
it could kill my entire garden,
but instead, it's actually helping the garden to flourish.
Now, I will explain why it could kill your entire garden.
It's actually one of the primary reasons
why people are scared of using straw.
But there are so many massive benefits to using straw,
such as mulch, saving water,
reducing the heat on your bed,
and also building incredible compost
and really fertile in-ground soil.
So why is straw so dangerous?
There's a chance
that your straw might have a persistent herbicide.
That herbicide, when applied to your garden,
can actually get into the soil
and actually affect your plants.
So in this video, let's talk about how to test
and make sure that your straw doesn't have an herbicide,
how to actually buy straw,
and also, all of its amazing properties
when used in the vegetable garden.
To kick it off, let's first talk about
how to actually source
and how to actually avoid the whole test for herbicide
in the first place by looking for one key word.
What is straw anyway?
Straw is usually the dried down stem of a grain crop.
So think something like oats, wheat, rye.
Usually, wheat tends to be the straw that I find in my area.
And the beauty of it is that it should have no seedheads,
because what they do is they take the grains,
they chop all the seedheads off,
and that's what becomes your flour, your barley,
your wholewheat berries, anything like that.
So this is all that's remaining.
Hopefully, they got all the seedheads,
'cause that's how they make their money.
Now, something like hay,
which is a very common misconception,
is that if you use hay in the garden,
you're probably going to regret your decisions.
That's because hay could be any sort of plant material
that's bundled up,
and it can contain a lot of seedheads.
So it could be a field of grass
that's all actually going to seed.
Somebody could come through, collect all that,
put it in a bale,
and that could be a hay bale.
You don't wanna spread that in your garden,
'cause all those seedheads are intact.
They're not actually trying
to economically remove those seeds
to make a separate product.
So that's the first distinction right there.
Don't wanna buy hay, you wanna buy straw.
The next distinction is sometimes straw,
or mulch in general, is labeled as organic.
And what they mean by that
is that it's an organically derived product.
So think something that's grown naturally,
like straw from wheat,
or something like a wood chip would be an organic product.
But that doesn't mean that it was grown organically.
And the reason why that's so important
is that if something is grown organically
they can't use those herbicides that are so dangerous.
On this side is garden straw, which has been pre-chopped,
making it very easy to spread across pots,
containers, raised beds, things like that.
That's where I like to use this.
And on this side is the straw from the straw bale itself.
One thing you'll notice
is that there are still some seedheads present,
and the size of the material itself is much more random,
with bigger chunks, smaller chunks all mixed together,
which can actually be great for use in-ground,
but when it comes to spreading in containers,
this can be a bit messy.
Also, of course, you have no idea
if this has been sprayed,
and it's not certified organic.
Now, things like glyphosate are scary,
and that's a whole nother topic,
but glyphosate usually does break down relatively quickly
in the sun and over time.
So if this was sprayed with glyphosate,
chances are most of that should be broken down.
I'm not gonna say that it's entirely,
a hundred percent free of it,
but realistically, it's not going to be transferring
to your garden from something like a straw bale.
If you're very lucky and you could find an organic mulch,
and this time I mean certified organic, grown organically.
So right here, this garden straw is certified organic,
which means that they can't actually use any
of those herbicides that we're so worried about.
That's just an automatic qualifier when it comes to organic.
So chances are you're not going to be able
to find organic mulch easily,
and if you do, it's going to be pretty pricey.
I called around a bunch of local feed stores and nurseries,
and first, asked them if they had straw,
and second, asked them if they had organic straw,
or if that straw was organic.
Nobody had organic straw present,
because realistically, I'm here in San Diego,
in an urban environment,
and there's nobody here growing organic wheat
to produce organic straw.
So if you're in a more rural area,
there's a chance you could call around and find organic.
And if you do, get it, it's fantastic material.
You could use it without testing anything, and you're safe.
But there is a way to test to make sure
that your straw doesn't have this herbicide.
So let's go over to the testing bench over there,
and I'll show you the experiment as I've set it up,
and how you could set it up at home as well.
Here's the testing set up,
and some of the basics behind it.
All of the soil came from the same bag, same brand.
All of these beans came from the same bag of seed.
All started at the exact same time.
And all these, the bigger beans up here,
were transplanted from a six cell
about four or five days ago.
Now, the setup itself involves, over here,
starting from this side, a control.
So this is just beans growing in soil
that I'm going to be watering directly from the hose.
Over here we have straw mixed into the soil,
and then the beans were transplanted into that.
This is the straw from the straw bale
that you just saw me sitting on.
Now, next to that is straw water, conventional.
That means that I'm going to be watering
this particular set of plants
using water from this jug right here.
More on that in a second.
The next one after that is the same as that, but organic.
So that is water from this jar over here.
And on the very far end is a tomato,
which I'm using because tomatoes grow very quickly
and I'm expecting that I'll see the results
a little bit faster.
Now, beans in particular are extra-sensitive,
so that's why we are using beans as the primary test bed.
The last two setups over here
are beans that were sewn into soil
that was mixed with either a conventional or organic straw.
And both of these will be also watered from these jugs.
Now, what are these jugs, and why do I keep mentioning them?
All they are is simply some of the straw,
in this case, the conventional straw,
shoved into a jar, which I then filled with water.
The same over here is true,
except it's organic straw instead of conventional.
And the idea behind it
is that as the water soaks with the straw,
that herbicide, if present, will get into the water.
So then, when I take this water and, say, set up,
water my conventional bean test over here,
I'm now transferring any of that potential contamination
to the soil and to the beans.
Now, since these beans have already started growing,
what we're looking at is actually what the new growth
will look like.
There's actually new leaves forming
on each one of these beans.
So very shortly, probably by the end of this week,
we will know whether these beans have been affected.
The tomato has also been growing,
and so far, everything looks good.
And remember, we're not testing
for the performance of the plants,
like not how they grow.
Instead, we're actually looking
at how the leaf structure forms.
If it's elongate, curled, twisted over,
or just never actually starts growing,
there's a chance that it was contaminated
with the herbicide.
So that's the basic premise of the setup.
For now, what I'll do is actually go through
and finish watering all of these different setups.
And then we'll continue on to the next tip,
and we'll check on this setup throughout this week
to see how it does.
Now that the experiment is set up,
let's pop into the garden
so I can show you why I think straw is so amazing,
and why it's worth going through this effort
that you see right here.
Welcome back to "The Potato Patch",
where we are discussing the first-use case for straw,
which is using straw as a growing medium.
That's one of the cool things about straw,
is that its ability to retain moisture means
that you can actually just grow in straw.
Some people will actually entirely grow
their vegetable gardens in straw bales.
It's called straw bale gardening,
and it's a method I've always wanted to try,
but just haven't got around to it,
because it uses a lot of water,
and here in San Diego, I don't know if I could justify it.
Now, I might look into it in the future,
but what we're talking about instead right here
is this Ruth Stout potato bed.
It is a potato bed where you just hill it up using straw
instead of soil,
and the straw will actually break down, feed the soil,
protect the potatoes from exposure to light,
which turns them green and toxic,
and also makes it really, really easy
to harvest your potatoes.
If I go over to that section and pull the straw back,
what you're looking at is actually a bunch of potatoes
just forming right underneath the surface of the straw,
on top of my ground.
The nice thing about that
is that when these plants die back,
all I need to do is push the straw outta the way
and just pick the potatoes right off the ground.
That's a really cool method,
but it's a little bit more unique,
and probably not something everyone will do.
So let's go over to another part of the garden
to talk about my, by far, stand down,
number one use case for straw,
which is going to save you a whole lot of money and time.
We're over here in my onion patch,
which is the perfect representation
of saving time and money by using straw.
Now, straw is in my opinion,
the best, most perfect mulch
that you could use in the garden,
for a variety of reasons,
but in particular, onions will benefit a lot from it.
That's because onions and, actually, most alliums,
alliums have very shallow roots
that don't go very far out,
and they don't go very far in-depth.
So by applying this mulch to the surface,
we're making sure that all that moisture
is locked into the soil,
and actually, it helps bring that moisture
up to the surface where these onion roots mostly are.
As water evaporates and hits the straw,
it condensates and forms little drops,
which we turn to the soil at the surface.
The nice thing about that
is that it keeps the surface very nice and moist,
helping foster microbial life,
even at the very top layer of your soil,
and also bringing worms up close to the surface,
where it's nice and cool and wet,
because the straw is creating a protective environment.
This does a lotta different things in your garden.
First of all, it's saving you a ton of water,
which saves you money,
especially if you're somewhere like San Diego, like I am,
where water is not very easy to access,
and it's actually quite expensive.
It also saves you the time
from having to water your garden all the time.
And if you're in San Diego, like me, of course,
there is also the moral, ethical dilemma of wasting water,
because we are at the bottom of the barrel
when it comes to water resources.
We're at the very end of the Colorado River,
and we don't just have water to throw away.
So the straw is not only making my plants healthier
by conserving the moisture in my soil,
but it's also actually making me ethically feel better
about growing food at home
and conserving water at the same time.
That is just one of the main reasons
why I love straw so much, especially as a mulch,
but it goes a lot further than that.
So let's go into another section of the garden,
where I could show you another example
of just how good straw is.
One of the main reasons I like using straw
so much more than something like a wood chip,
is that if I were to use wood chips in my garden,
and then accidentally bury them in my soil,
That wood chip would tie up all the nitrogen in my soil,
leading to poor plant performance.
The reason why that is
is because wood chips have
a very high carbon-to-nitrogen ratio,
whereas straw is much, much lower,
something like a fifth the number of carbon to nitrogen.
And that just means that, basically,
if a bacteria were to take that material
and try to break it down,
it'd be much, much easier
for it to break down the straw, versus the wood chip.
In fact, you could even build your beds,
as I mentioned, out of straw,
and it won't hinder the growth of your plant.
And another cool thing
is that you can make lasagna-style beds.
This whole bed here,
I actually flipped using the Lasagna style,
which is where you take layers of straw,
and then you place them on your bed surface,
and you bury it in layers of compost.
What that does is it creates a sandwich
of carbon and nitrogen nutrients,
allowing for worms, bacteria to thrive,
because they love eating that stuff up.
And in exchange, they give you wonderful fertility
for your plants.
It also helps increase the organic matter.
But, really, the thing I like is the peace of mind,
knowing that if I were to mulch my pathways with straw,
and some of it accidentally mixed into my soil,
I'm not really scared that it's going to affect my growth
of the plants.
But if I were to use wood chips instead,
and that got mixed into my soil,
there's a good chance it's going to stunt
the growth of my plants,
and then I'm going to need to apply fertilizer.
So it is a nice peace of mind,
but it also does ultimately yield a much healthier soil too.
So it's a great mulch,
and also it is a great amendment of fertility,
to increase your organic matter
and the liveliness of your soil in general.
This next major benefit of straw
is actually a major deficit for me,
and that is actually its ability
to reflect the sunlight away from your soil.
The reason why it sucks for me
is because I'm trying to film content for you guys
to teach you how to garden.
But it makes for a very hard background to shoot against,
because it's very shiny and reflective.
Now, that shiny reflectiveness
is fantastic for keeping your soil cooler.
As the sun comes down and hits the straw,
some of that sunlight is just going to be reflected away,
either back onto your plants,
which, I'm going to just make up this statement right now,
could increase the growth of your plants
by increasing the amount of sunlight on them.
But actually, what's known for sure
is that it will keep your soil cooler.
By simply stopping the sun from hitting your soil,
that soil just can't heat up as much,
especially if you're using something
like compost over here.
This feels quite hot to the touch,
whereas this straw doesn't really feel that hot.
Even if it did get hot,
it's also a layer away from touching the soil.
And when I touch the soil underneath,
it's actually cool to the touch.
So come summertime,
it's not only going to help preserve
the moisture in your soil,
but it's also going to keep those plants happier
and healthier by not overheating the soil,
and actually, the roots just at the base
of the plants themselves.
So again, for me, not so great,
'cause it is very shiny and reflective,
but for anyone else, and actually even for me as well,
it helps keep that moisture in,
and also keeps the temperatures down.
A lot of gardeners struggle with pest damage
from things like earwigs, roly-polys or sowbugs,
pill bugs, whatever you wanna call them,
and that is because those are the detritovores
that most people don't expect to eat their plants.
Now, a detritovore is something that wants to eat detritus,
things like fallen leaves,
or really, anything else besides fresh plant material.
But let's take a closer look over here,
so I could show you
why these pill bugs are eating my radishes.
Now that you have a closer look,
you can see that all these radishes
have these kind of little chew marks,
and actually a little chew pathways.
That's because these little guys over here, the roly-poly,
are eating them.
Now, the roly-poly
does prefer eating decaying organic matter,
but if you look around the soil here,
there's nothing really decaying.
It's just little chips of wood
that are left over from the compost material.
But if I were to actually follow my advice
and have mulched this bed earlier on,
they would've a hundred percent preferentially ate
and broken down the straw instead.
There are many advantages to this.
Of course, the first one is
that they're going to eat the straw instead of your plants,
or the radishes, in this case.
And the second is that, as they eat the straw,
they will produce frass, or bug poop,
which will in turn act as a fertilizer for your plants.
So the nice thing about straw
is that it's really easy to spread,
it's easy to buy a new bale of.
And the key to this method
is that you are using fresh mulch.
If I were to put old straw here,
there wouldn't be enough material
for them to eat to survive.
So you wanna make sure that you're applying fresh mulch
every time you notice pest damage
from things roly-polys and earwigs.
So now we have quite a few uses for straw in the garden.
And, actually, another one is that it's a wonderful material
for building your compost piles.
As we mentioned earlier, straw is a form of carbon,
which means that it's a good way
to balance your green material.
When you build a compost pile,
it's all about browns and greens,
which is carbon and nitrogen.
So here, I just added some greens.
What I'll do is I'll take a handful of my straw,
which I always keep handy next to my pile,
and then I'll sprinkle it right on top of my green material.
As I keep adding these little buckets of compost material
from the kitchen,
and add these small layers of straw,
you kind of end up forming a perfect compost pile,
where the brown material
from the straw helps soak up that moisture.
As we mentioned earlier, it's really good at that.
And then the bacteria could get in there,
break it down very rapidly,
using the nitrogen from the greens
to help break down the carbon and the straw.
As we mentioned earlier as well, of course,
the bacteria, microbes, they love eating straw,
so it makes for a very good layer in your compost pile.
Now, a word of caution is that if you add a layer
that's too thick in straw,
it can create a sort of impenetrable mat.
So you wanna make sure you're adding it in small layers,
like I'm doing right here.
Or, as you add it, you wanna at least make sure
you're mixing your pile.
Now, if you are somewhere like I am, in the desert,
and you don't have access to fallen leaves,
then you're really struggling
to find a brown material to balance your compost out,
and straw is going to be the best one.
Now, of course, as I mentioned at the start,
this persistent herbicide that could be present in straw
can actually survive, even after being composted.
So you still wanna make sure
that either you're finding an organic source,
or you're following the testing protocol
that we're showing in this video.
So let's go back to the test bench
and see how things are looking. It's
It's now been two days since our last update,
and things are still looking healthy.
So far, I don't see any obvious signs of any issues.
So I'm going to do now
is come through and water these again
with some of the straw water.
And after I finish this water,
I will go ahead and refresh the straw in here.
So here's some fresh straw.
I'm going to top it off with water.
And then we'll continue the experiment.
(water whooshing)
Right here in front of you is another example
of how mulch, and in particular, straw,
can save you time in the garden.
Over in this section where there is no straw,
there are quite a bit more weeds present.
That's because the straw isn't there
to stop the weeds from germinating.
That works in two different ways.
First of all, it just creates a barrier
to where the sunlight cannot reach the soil,
and a lot of weed seeds actually need sun
in order to germinate.
So that's one way it does it.
The other way it does it is by simply blocking the seed
from reaching the ground.
Now, while the straw does retain some moisture,
most of that moisture is at the very base layer of the straw
where it returns to the soil,
and the top is generally a bit dry.
So if the weed seed does land on top of your straw
and somehow manages to germinate,
there just isn't enough moisture present
for it to actually thrive and succeed
and grow in your garden.
It's officially been three weeks,
and this experiment has come to a conclusion.
Here are the results.
There are no signs of persistent herbicide damage
on the beans or on the tomato.
This tomato has grown three or four new leaf branches,
and there is no evidence of twisting, contorting,
sort of broken looking laves that just don't look natural,
or tangled up in themselves.
Same with the beans.
The ones that were already established and growing
have put out new leaves,
and they all look fine to me.
I'm not gonna say that they look healthy,
because sometimes I give them really brown straw water
that sometimes I probably let sit out
for a little bit too long.
But that way, I was sure that they were getting any exposure
that they might be getting if there was herbicide.
Now, the beans that were planted in the six cells,
getting watered by the straw water,
and actually growing in the straw itself,
also show no signs of the herbicide damage.
Now, they do show signs of being extremely sad,
because this morning I accidentally knocked over
this whole tray and snapped them all.
But here's the leaves.
There's no signs of any damage.
They look like totally healthy, normal bean leaves.
So nothing to worry about there.
But that's it.
I now can say that this straw
that I already know personally has an herbicide,
has no herbicide.
There's no evidence of it,
and now I'm just safe to use it wherever I want,
without any sort of fears.
Now, I'm not gonna tell you
that this is a 100,000% guaranteed test
that you will a hundred percent be sure
there is no herbicide,
but this will get you far enough
that you could actually trust and start using it.
Now, you could also get a relationship
with the person you're buying it from.
Get to know them, ask them questions.
And if they're a good person, they'll tell you the truth.
If not, you have your test to fall back on.
But it's just worth it to me to use straw.
There are so many major benefits,
from healthier soil, reduced water,
reduced heat on the soil, reduced weeds.
Just everything about it is wonderful.
It breaks down quick, it makes great compost.
I could grow beautiful-looking potatoes in it.
And trust me, there are some big potatoes growing
in that straw patch over there.
So hopefully this gave you guys
the confidence to use straw, to test it,
because it's just so wonderful for the garden,
it's so wonderful for the soil.
And honestly, the alternative for me in my area
is wood chips,
and I don't really wanna go down that road,
for all the reasons I mentioned throughout the video.
So that's all I have on straw.
If I missed something,
or you still have a burning question about straw,
or some other mulch,
please drop it down in the comments.
But thanks for watching,
and I'll see you guys next time.