Any questions Gene Roush might have had about his new garden were answered early on in the growing season.
“My back tells me this was the right move,” he said as he inspected his row of plants, most of which were planted atop hay bales.
Roush’s hay bale garden, along the 400 block of East Lincoln Street, has already borne fruit — er, vegetables, to be exact.
Beans are starting to pod, and Roush’s wife, Laura, already has picked some of the radishes.
“About everything we’d have in the ground, except for corn,” he said. “We’ll get enough for what we need.”
Beets, red bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, zucchini and yellow squash all have sprouted nicely.
The recent spell of wet, warm weather has been a boon.
“It rained the other day, and whoosh, those things just shot up,” he said. “I haven’t had to water anything in several days.”
Roush strategically placed 30 hay bales he purchased from local farmer David Tidd on a square layer of cardboard.
“It’s important to know where you want them the first time, because it gets a lot harder to move them once the bales have been sitting a while,” Roush said.
Roush soaked the hay bales with water prior to planting, and applied fertilizer as a pretreatment.
He waited until well into April before planting because of the late arrival of warm spring temperatures.
A 2-inch layer of potting soil was used as the growing base. A soaking hose snakes along the plants for watering, if necessary.
The benefits were immediate.
“My back is not nearly as sore after a day in the garden,” Roush noted.
Weeds weren’t an issue, either. His only concern is grass growing up around the bottom of the bales.
