These are the start of our new Hudson Homestead: raised garden beds made of locally-farmed straw bales surrounding a mix of homemade compost and purchased composted manure; held together with a layer of plastic sheeting. Here is how they came into being: the best-sunned and largest part of the lot on which our house sits, the previous residents asphalted over in order for about 10 cars to be able to park there. In order to build a food garden at our new home we had 2 options: get rid of the asphalt or make raised beds.We didn't have the time or money to get rid of the asphalt ourselves or hire someone to do it, and even if we did we would still have had to do something with the asphalt and improve the soil that had been underneath it mightily. Raised beds--in this country many people make tidy rectilinear raised beds with wood or even stone edging--that can be expensive (again we don't have the dosh) as well as requires lumber or quarried rock that might be imported, treated, or at the very least, uses a lot of fossil fuels for transport, cutting etc.
Another factor was that Nicholas and I also were at our busiest time of the year right when we needed to get these up and running. He and I are both generally fans of straw bale construction (like Cobb houses) because it is pretty low impact/renewable. Nicholas had little time and I had absolutely no time to help in the physical construction of the beds, so we also needed something fast and cheap and convenient--which *can* coexist with sustainable, it turns out! The straw, from a farm across the river, was possible for one person to obtain and move around on his own. Other benefits are that many plants like strawberries, melons and even potatoes are quite happy to be grown in straw bedding with little soil, and I speculate that in the heat of the summer the asphalt underneath will hold the heat in enough that we might get decent Okra here in upstate New York! I also like the range of soil textures all in one bed--I am personally fascinated by the theory that strict rectilinear raised or edged beds don't permit for mysterious microecosystems of sloping messy borders that create many benefits humans don't realize we are missing....
So, plants needing richer soil go in the centres and the berries and melons and squashes etc will go in the edges. We also are doing a modified square-foot gardening technique so that plants are closer together than are usually traditionally planted when in strict rows. The straw will eventually decompose and join the soil. The plastic is holding the beds together largely because last but not least complicating matters, we actually need to move these beds around in another month or so, and it keeps the beds together and lightweight, and was cheap--so, one bit of fossil fuel material, which we will use until it fails; as the straw decomposes, eventually we could pile some stones, branches and other materials to make British Isles-style mini hedgerows. If I had had more time I would have sourced something different to hold the straw in--perhaps woven willow shoots foraged from down by the river, or salvaged inert materials--but the plastic is pretty minimal at least.
