From NY Times article Grasping at Straw

Do you have bad dirt? No dirt? Is the earth in your garden actually a sidewalk?

If you’re not the least bit country, a bale is one of those densely packed, rectangular bundles that you might see in a Halloween display. A straw bale typically measures about 24 by 42 by 18 inches, and costs $5 or $6. In other words, a straw bale is often literally cheaper than dirt.

It was Mr. Karsten’s clever notion to condition the bale with a little fertilizer and water, creating a kind of instant compost pile. “The crust of the bale decomposes slowly,” he said. This is the vessel. The inside, which decays faster, “is our potting mix.” Stick a soaker hose on top, then plug some tomato seedlings into a hole gouged out of the straw. Time to wash the taint of barnyard off your hands: you’ve got a vegetable garden.

The advantages of straw bale are legion, Mr. Karsten said. The straw, having been harvested for its wheat or oats. A straw bale should be clean of weed seeds. What few weeds do appear in the loose mix — we’re talking one or two — can be plucked out easily. The bale stands thigh-high; there’s no need to bow down before a cabbage. And the residual heat from the bacterial decomposition may allow you to start planting a few weeks earlier than usual. (Just drape some plastic over the top.) At the end of the growing season, you’ve got rich compost to add your flower beds.

Ms. Donaldson, 60, recalls her father growing vegetables in straw some three decades ago. And in the ’90s she planted as many as 2,000 bales for her own organic truck farm in Tiptonville, Tenn. More recently, straw bale has become something of a mission. Last winter, she moved into a transitional housing shelter in Mobile, Ala., and helped the women and children there start a 250-bale garden.

“Most of the people we are working with now don’t have the capital to buy a lot of tools,” she said. And straw can be managed with little more than scissors.