On today's Q&A episode, I'm going to answer a question I've received from a couple of people

regarding the Strawbell Garden episode or blog post you may have read.

And this specifically refers to the amount of fertilizer that I added to the straw bales,

both the nitrogen and the all-purpose fertilizer at the very end.

The first question I received, I don't have it right in front of me, but it was basically

if all of this nitrogen that you added to the straw bales worked so amazingly for the straw bales,

why can't I just do the same thing and add all of that directly to my garden soil?

And I thought that was a really good question and one I hadn't really even thought to answer because a lot of times we do look at

those fertilizer inputs as being something that directly addresses the plant, which that's true.

If I were to go and I were to take a nitrogen source such as the malorganite

and I would put it in my soil in advance of planting or I would side dress it around existing

plants and watering it in, then I would assume that that nitrogen would be there for that plant.

But when it comes to straw bell gardening, the nitrogen is there to help speed up the composting

process. So the straw bale in effect becomes its own composted soil substance. It's kind of hard

to describe. But basically the nitrogen and the water along with the straw bale, which if you know much about

composting in general, you've already got your greens, which is the nitrogen, the water, and then

the carbon source, which is the straw. And then, of course, the way that the bale is, you've got

your air. So you're basically making a sped up compost area to plant your plants into. So that nitrogen isn't necessarily

going to directly impact the plants as much as it is to actually create the compost. And for that

reason, you wouldn't want to add that amount of nitrogen to garden soil. It would be way overkill and it would probably

do damage to your soil, quite frankly. And even if it didn't damage your soil, you've got the risk

of runoff because when plants can't uptake the nutrients that are added to it, it's going to runoff.

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