In Depth: Straw Bale Gardening Pioneer Joel Karsten

Twenty years ago, Joel Karsten had a brilliant idea.

Thanks in part to his early experiences gardening with his Grandma Josephine and desperate for a solution to his new home's backyard (the soil was essentially construction fill), Joel had a feeling he just might be able to garden successfully in straw bales.

When he couldn't find academic support for his idea, he returned to his childhood home on a farm in Southwestern Minnesota.  In an overwhelming gesture of support, Joel's Dad welcomed him home with a whole hayrack full of straw bales. And, that was just the beginning.

The approach Joel and his father used to perfect Straw Bale Gardening was actually quite scientific. Splitting the bales into five rows, they began to run various trials. Joel was dedicated to testing whether straw bales could be used as a substrate for growing vegetables. On that Spring day in 1994, they planted 50 bales of straw without any idea of what was to come.

By the middle of June, just a month after planting, they both realized the process was a major success. Truly, the plants growing out of the straw bales were twice as tall as the plants growing in the soil. A new method of gardening was underway…

And yet, it would take 14 years for the world to discover the pioneering work of Joel Karsten.

This episode is the first of a three part series on the weekly gardening podcast Still Growing... featuring Joel Karsten and his Straw Bale Gardening method.

This Episode, Part 1, chronicles Joel's early experiences in the garden as well as his various entrepreneurial endeavors.

When someone is as humble and hard working as Joel, it's easy to dismiss success; chalking it up to simple good fortune. On closer inspection, it's precisely his incredible Midwestern work ethic, pride in doing good work, and a serious passion for "the new" that has made Joel successful in every single pursuit that has caught his attention.

It is fitting, then, that a simple straw bale is the medium behind Joel's successful breakthrough gardening method: Straw Bale Gardening.

To me, the magic of the Straw Bale Gardening story is that Joel was not just "Grasping at Straw" when he acted on his idea. He thoughtfully and scientifically pursued it for over a decade; refining what he learned and continuing to search for ways to improve his approach.

In order to be successful, gardeners need to appreciate the science behind Straw Bale Gardening:

"Very often people will email me, 'So you just get a bale of straw, and you dig the inside out and you put the dirt in and you plant your plants in there.' … You can do that if you want to. But, if you do that - you're not Straw Bale Gardening - you're soil gardening on top of a bale of straw.

What we're doing is we're converting the straw … and we're going to create our own brand new virgin soil inside of that straw bale."

- Joel Karsten, Straw Bale Gardens