If you've been receiving our weekly CSA boxes, you've probably noticed a little hay or straw tucked in with your vegetables. You might even be wondering, "What the hay?"
There are a couple of reasons for why we use hay instead of plastic
At The Flocking Great Farm, we're trying to reduce our dependence on plastics and fossil fuels as much as possible. Instead of plastic mulch, we use straw and hay to cover our garden beds. Most of it is harvested right here on our property, although we've had to purchase some this year while we establish our own system. Our long-term goal is to grow and harvest 100% of our own mulch, creating a closed-loop fertility system.
Mulch serves several important purposes. It helps keep the soil covered, reduces evaporation, conserves moisture, moderates soil temperature, suppresses weeds, and eventually breaks down into organic matter.
Whenever possible, we also leave plant roots in the ground after harvest and return leaves and pruning’s to the soil around each crop. Since plants pull nutrients from the soil, it only makes sense to return as much of that plant material as we can. Of course, we're harvesting the fruits, roots, or leaves for your CSA boxes, so we can never return everything. But by recycling crop residues, using organic mulch, and planting cover crops in the fall and spring, we hope to continually build healthy, fertile soil with very few outside inputs.