It came in a bale with strings. Local scout group sells pumpkins in October and November and they always have bales of what they say is hay for 6 bucks a bale. They use them as decorations and shelving for the pumpkins. Can't beat the price.

I haven't had many weeds coming up at all.

if it's not straw.

It's fun to read about your garden. I repotted a houseplant the other day. That's the closest to gardening I'll get until April or so.

Straw is more yellow in color while hay tends to be grayish green. Straw is the stalks from grains and is usually used for bedding. Hay is mown grasses and is sun dried and baled as feed for animals. Because hay is 'food', it normally costs several times more than straw.
At $6 a bale, it might well be hay. Most people also use straw in compost.

If so, it is straw. Hay in Central Florida is usually a pale greenish yellow with very fine stems.

Hay raised in Florida is generally a Bahia or Bermuda grass - and you really don't want those in your garden. The roots tend to spread as much or more than the seeds and can take over the plot.

Straw is better - usually it is oat, wheat or rye stalks after the grains have been harvested, so there will be less chance it will sprout and try to take over your garden.

Be prepared to mulch or get more aggressive if you start seeing grass come up in the spring. You won't see it yet - pasture and hay grass tends to grow with longer days and warmer nights.

I am no longer keeping up with gardening, but as a previous horse breeder, I do know my hays and straws.

probably straw. stalks are yellow. It's all a part of the garden at this point with just the ends poking out of the rows.

too many to list. She was the "mother" of organic gardening and your "lasagna" garden is a refinement of her "deep mulch method".

Good luck.

After living in Raleigh for 28 years and developing my driveway into a container and straw-bale filled garden (due to where the sun now shines in my yard), I will have a new place to garden! We move in mid January, we have a big flat sunny back yard - less extreme summer heat. One must will be our first ever asparagus patch! I think I can see a mix of raised beds, in-ground planting - so lots of work to do with a pad and a pencil!

Was the cardboard layer you put down shredded or was it flat pieces of cardboard? If it was shredded, how did you shred it?

How did you learn about lasagna gardening?

I'm envious of your ability to grow pineapples!

Today when I was working at my community garden, I was digging up wood chips. The wood chips were delivered last spring. We used most of them up last year but there are still some left and I was digging them to use on the paths. Most had already composted!

However, I think some wood chip compost skews the ph level, so I have to check into that before I put any into the beds. I need to do a soil test anyway.

cardboard sheets under the initial layer of wood chips.. In areas where I put raised beds I removed the wood chips, put the cardboard down, both sheet and shredded (really whatever I had on hand. ) it takes about 3 months for the cardboard to become a part of the soil. In the raised beds I put a layer of cardboard, a layer of cheap topsoil, then a layer of straw or hay, then a layer of greens, (grass clippings, plants I ran over with the lawnmower and coffee grounds.) I finished with a 2 inch layer of cheap topsoil from the box stores, I buy broken bags to save money. I mix perlite in the topsoil to help aeration, then I planted and put wood chips over the beds about 2 inches thick. I did not plant directly into wood chips due to nitrogen being used while they break down. My walkways are wood chips, about 6 - 12 inches deep in places. I needed to go that thick due to above ground tree roots that I constantly tripped over. They(the chips) have settled to about 3 to 8 inches after 4 months and some good rain.

I used the internet to search, research, read, re again, search some more and just started experimenting. I want to go as far organic as I possibly can, this is my first year and the only pesticide I am using is diatemacious earth powder. The only fertilizer I'm using is composted horse manure and compost. I do pick tomato hornworms off my plants by hand. Have not had a big problem with them yet but my fingers are crossed. I'm semi retired so work doesn't interfere with my hobby.

Lasagna gardening was my first find. Food forests were my second. I'm just working on growing things without hassle. Reading about food forests I ran across a guy in New Jersey that said, "It's not easy, but it's simple".. I find that to be a fact

The pineapples were easy. Cut the tops off, put in dirt (originally 10 inch clay pots), let them root, and wait. 2nd year is the charm and there are no sweeter pineapples than the ones you take from the stalk to the table. Mmmmmmmmm.

Basically my entire side yard is a compost pile approx 30 ft wide x 60 ft long with a depth of 8 inches. I wouldn't trade it for all the grass in the world.

Ah, clever, the broken bags technique. I used to have a big nursery/greenhouse operation as one of my web clients and I learned about that option there. There are a LOT of broken bags in an operation that size. I always took the broken bags--nothing wrong with them at all.

What's the difference between a food forest and a regular garden, like a raised bed garden? I looked up a definition on the web but not sure it's what you're talking about.

I was curious about the cardboard because I use it a lot to hold down weeds, however, you can also compost cardboard like egg cartons. I'm not so sure I want to take the time to shred all the cardboard around here, though. Also, since I am organic, I wouldn't want to put cardboard with colored pictures or printing on it in my mix as I don't know how organic that is. White cardboard, of course, has been bleached. Tearing cardboard when it's wet is pretty easy, though.

Thanks for the info in the first paragraph on how much the pathway chips broke down. I can see now I'll be ordering more on Monday. I love it that wood chips are free! I order mine from a tree guy here who goes by "Squirrel." If you ask his real name, he says "all you need to know is 'Squirrel."

Let us know when you get that first pineapple!

the gardening channel with James Priogoni on youtube.

that's where the food forest idea came from, then I watched back to eden gardening, and a bunch of other yt videos.

those are the "wood chippers".

I'm west central florida/zone 9/10 and winter has become weather weird rainwise. For a long time we got none at this time, This year we've been having almost weekly showers. I keep 5 55 gal barrels and about 30 one gal milk jugs of water for the dry times. It amazes me how little water the deep cardboard requires to stay moist under the chips

One of these days I'll learn to post pix on DU and show how it's working for me.

Did the same lasagna gardening treatment in the backyard. Worked great, and kept all the tall weeds that had taken over down.

Even as little as 4 years later, there was no trace of the cardboard I'd placed initially. There might still be some down there, but there's a half foot or more of topsoil on top of it now.

I stopped gardening for a few years, since I got a better job, which correspondingly came with less free time. But this week I decided that I'm going to dig up the backyard again this year (about 1/20th acre of plantable area, not huge) and go the victory garden route.

Just seems like a good idea.

Going to skip the squash this time though, since I don't care for it, and go with some melons instead. I love some melon.

Tomatoes always go well, Chard, Peppers, then standards like Onions, Potatoes and Carrots.