What's going on everyone? What's going on everyone? Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening. We are

joined today by a really awesome guest and a method that I've really only dipped my toes in the pond

of and that would be Straw Bail Gardening.

So we have Joel Carston on the podcast.

He's the pioneer of the Straw Bail Gardening Method and of course the author of the best selling

book as well. So this whole week we're going to be talking about you guessed it's

straw bale gardening which I think it's going to be a great week if you're at home

you have some extra time on your hands. There's

something that you can sink your teeth into right at home. So Joel, thanks so

much for coming on. Oh, it's great to be with you, Kevin. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, of course. And so I think the real first

question is how did this all come about for you? Were you a lifelong gardener?

How did you stumble upon this? Well I was born and raised on a crop and dairy farm in rural Minnesota.

And even as a little kid, Wentzwanna to have a busted bail of straw or bail of hay.

You know, the string would break.

We'd throw it against the barn and six months or year

would go by and natural decomposition that bail would start decomposing.

And the biggest, tallest, healthiest, greenest thistles on the whole farm were the ones that would grow out of these

decomposing bales.

And so even as a little kid, I noticed this process and you know, it was always my job to get the

fork from the barn and fork that decomposing old bail onto the manure

spreader when it went by and I would notice how it was so decomposed inside it would almost

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