- 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.
