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Hay as mulch?
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Posted by deep_south_gardener z9b (My Page) on Sat, May 2, 09 at 16:32
Hey ya'll,
My husband and I are looking a country property.
The most recent property has a hay barn with
a couple of bales of hay. Can this be used
for mulch? We have no animals at this time nor
do we know anyone who could use it. Any help
would be appreciated.
Brenda |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Hay as mulch?
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Brenda,
I wouldn't be inclined to use the hay as mulch. Without knowing where it came from, you could be taking a chance on spreading unwanted weed seeds in your gardens. I'm from the deep South myself, on the Gulf Coast and we just seem to have an overabundance of "strange" vegetation.. lol ! I have horses and make sure I buy my hay from local people who's hay fields I'm familiar with... messed up one time and bought some from someone I didn't know and ended up with cockle-burrs all over the darn pasture. Susan |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| I use old hay for mulch, but only on top of cardboard. Its more to cover up the cardboard and add to the soil as it breaks down. Hay is grass seed. I would think that you would get grass growing anywhere you put it on the bare soil. Straw is very good for the garden, however. |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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Hey neighbor Susan, I'm also on the Gulf Coast and you are so right about weeds.
Brenda, today I am extremely cautious about using any mulch or hay from unknown sources around my garden because of the risk of introducing weeds. I learned the hard way. The first lesson was sand spurs. Nasty weeds with very sharp sticker burs but not real hard to kill out. Next lesson was the cockleburs. Their sticker spurs are not nothing compared to the sand spurs but much more difficult to kill. The final but hardest lesson. Nut grass!!! AKA Yellow or Purple nutsedge. I had the yellow and I thought I was never going to get shed of it. I had nightmares of the stuff growing through the floors of my house. I asked the county agent how to get rid of it and he said "quick, move off and leave it". After three years of fighting the nut grass I started to believe he wasn't joking. I have been nut grass free for five years but I can't go to the garden without looking for it.
If you don't get it you don't have to worry about getting rid of it. |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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Hey ya'll,
Thanks for all the advice. That's what I was afraid of.
It's just so much. I hope the seller removes it before
we purchase. I don't know what we'd do with it or how
we would even move it. The property is already overgrown
with weeds and clover. And ants of course. It was horse
pasture. No trees so that would be top landscape priority.
Could we compost it. There is one bale that is already
open. The other two are still bundled. I'm not a country
girl and didn't realize how huge those bales are. Well
thanks for the help. I'll keep reading the post on
farm life and keep dreaming of having one of our own. runningtrails,
I checked out your farm site. What a nice place you have.
I'd love to sit down to a plate of those biscuits or
a slice of that pie. And I wouldn't have even noticed
the Christmas table cloth had you not mentioned it. LOL
We had a crawfish boil today, and I was more worried
about how the garden looked than the house. Mop the
floors clean the bathrooms and call it a day. The guys
have taken off for free fire wood and I am left with
the grandkids who are playing video games and eating
more crawfish. I'm not ready for another platter yet.
I'm going to try your recipe for biscuits when my
youngest son is in for a visit. He's the only one
who appreciates home made. Well have a wonderful
Sunday afternoon. I'll check in from time to time. Brenda
NOLA |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| Thank you for the encouragement Brenda! I made more biscuits today. We eat a lot of them. I had them for lunch with fried ham. I grew up in Memphis and still eat a lot of southern foods. I always worry about how my garden looks too. It's a lot more important to me than the house. Someone once told me that you are either a good gardener or a good housekeeper. Rarely will you find someone who is both. It is certainly true of myself. |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| UHHHH OHHHHH As I been cleaning out the goat pen I thought hmmmmm hay with lotsa poop so I been using it all over the yard as mulch in very thick layers. been doing this for about 3 weeks now and not a weed has come through it nor has anything "new" grown. so far no problems but I guess time will tell what the end result will be. |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| I have used this same old hay all over the place for mulch, on the veggie garden and on the flowerbed and it gets all over the grass too. I got it early last spring, a year ago and have hed no problems with extra weeds. If I didn't need it for the veggies this year, I'd use it as mulch on cardboard all along the edge of the driveway. I'm going to grow pumpkins and squash on it, as well, with cardboard underneath to keep all my usual the grass and weeds down. Maybe the grass and weed seeds are not viable after time. My old hay was old and slightly moldy when I got it. |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| Brenda, if I may make another suggestion ? If you don't intend to use the hay, why not offer it on FreeCycle and have someone come get it if you get the property ? I'm assuming that you are talking about round bales here and not the smaller square bales ? There's got to be someone with livestock in your area that could use the hay. Is the hay still in the fields or is it in a barn ? Or, maybe put it up on Craigslist as a "freebie". "Neighbor Islandmanmitch " I had forgotten about the sandspurs.. lol ! Nasty little beggars and hurt like blue blazes on bare feet ! Susan |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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A friend and her seven year old daughter had planned to come for a visit. The daughter had been fired up for weeks about coming to Florida and going to the beach. When they got here the daughter ran out across the backyard to see the beach and stepped in sandspurs. She sat down in Fire Ants trying to get relief from the sandspurs. Bless her heart after I got her sandspur and fire ant free all she wanted to do was go back to Michigan.
Florida is eat up with invasives. ONE out of every THREE plants growing wild in Florida are non-native. That is not counting non-natives growing in landscapes. Spit on the ground and a spit weed may sprout. Most hay fields here have from a few to a lot of weeds depending on the field. Using hay for mulch around here is like playing Russian roulette. Sometimes a click and others times a bang. |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| I'd compost it, maybe use it in a barrel or something to grow potatoes in. Would they be useable for a growing medium? Think straw bale gardening, anybody know if hay can be substituted for straw? We've never done it, but afterwards any weeds would be contained to the area & easy enough to kill. Just be sure the bales have space between them-don't make any blocks bigger than 3x3, as spontaneous combustion can occur. Brendasue |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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Hey ya'll thanks for all the help. Hope ya'll are
having a wonderful weekend and all you Mom's have
a great day tomorrow. We went riding today. I got
a little to much sun. Pretty day to work outside
early in the morning and late after 5. I'll keep
ya'll posted and check in on everyone. Brenda |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| I just found a website where you can use hay bales to plant in!! I actually went out today and got 6 bales to start my haybale crops |
Here is a link that might be useful: looks awesome...hope it works
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| Msjay, that's pretty neat. I came across something on a website similar to that, but the couple were using just bags of potting soil. They started with about 20-30 bags of good potting soil, made holes in them and put they're vegetable and flowers seedlings in the holes, watered them and let Nature take it's course. They use the same bags over and over, plus continued to buy more each year. If I remember right, I think they had over a hundred bags laid out in rows. Susan |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| wow! That sounds promising but soil can be expensive. $4-5 a bag at 20 bags and you are spending some real money. Then if someone (or the wind) knocks it over, damage for sure... The reason I like the hay bale idea so much is because when I plant my collards there is no soil to get into them, I do not have to bend over too far to get the the "crops", I can recycle the straw into mulch when the fall comes (around my flower beds etc). I am all hyped up over this idea. |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| Love that hay planting idea! If I didn't need all my old hay for potatoes this year, I'd try that. Looks quick and easy. Maybe next year... |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| well I just want to update you on me using hay as mulch. As I think I stated earlier I used hay that was loaded with goat poop. Although it looks pretty normal I suppose it had started breaking down before I removed it out of the goat pen. It was sorta wet and sticky. I spread it around my trees and bordering certain places pretty thick and so far no weeds what-so-ever have sprouted. It has been over a month now. Also my lilac bush has experienced a good bit of growth. I have been here over 2 years and i would swear this is the first time I have seen that bush growing. So I guess old pine mulch partially decompossed and full of poop is not all bad. Sheryl did you see the photos where they did the potatoes in the old bales? He had a pretty good crop and clean potatoes just like you want them. |
RE: Hay as mulch?
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| I had dairy goats at one time and used hay as bedding for them. When it became soiled, I'd used it for mulch on my garden (flowers and veggies.) It worked great. It was native hay from our 20 acres so there were no "new" seeds that weren't already present here. I miss the enriched soiled hay. I still use hay from our pasture that has been in the barn for several years now, I now longer have animals to enrich it. Key thing about the mulch is to have it thick. The thicker the better and you'll have fewer seeds germinate. Good luck
Cooper |
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