Upon retiring in June of last year, one goal was to plant a big, beautiful vegetable garden. With great enthusiasm, I set to work diligently rototilling, planting and fertilizing. Unfortunately, ...

When Joel Karsten was growing up on a farm in Minnesota, he noticed how lushly weeds grew from rotting bales of straw. That made him wonder: If straw worked so well for growing weeds, wouldn’t it work ...

Straw bales are often used for fall decorating, but did you know you also can turn them into a budget-friendly raised bed garden for growing vegetables, herbs, and annual flowers? Once winter sets in, ...

If you’d like to install a raised bed but don’t have the resources to build one, you can achieve the same effect by growing your plants in straw bales. It’s also a great option for those with poor ...

In this publicity photo provided by Cool Springs Press, Minnesota author and gardener, Joel Karsten, picks tomatoes from his straw bale garden. Karsten is the leading evangelist of a straw-bale ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. For about $5 to $10 you can pick up a bale of straw at your local hardware store or nursery. That means you can have a lot of fun ...

My sister Laura and Grandma Josephine tending the chickens on the family farm. Yes, that is a little genuine Minnesota straw in the foreground. Because the straw bale generates heat as the straw ...

When I moved into my new Philadelphia rowhouse, I was determined to grow the vegetable garden that had eluded me all those years in a cramped Manhattan apartment. But reality struck with the first ...