A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 hay or straw??

called the local feed store and they have bales of hay and straw. is either better for the compost pile? or are they pretty much the same? i mean i know they all break down but for some reason i am thinking one has more seeds although i'm not sure where my head came up with that info!

I'm just curious. Why are you buying stuff for the compost pile? I do a compost pile because I can't afford to buy potting, starter or top soil for the garden. And all I put in mine are leaves and grass clippings.

Hay is more likely to have seed.
Do you really need to be buying compost additives? Fallen leaves, shredded paper etc will do the same job as the straw or hay.

i don't have any more leaves or any browns at all. my bin is 3 ft by 3 ft by 3 ft tall and it's probably only about 1 ft full. didn't know i would have it made this spring so all last fall we let the city pick up the leaves. i only got 1 garbage bag full and that was a pile my neighboor raked out of her bushes this spring! i can have all the greens i need since now we are starting to mow the yard more and all the kitchen scraps but no browns in sight. i could buy a paper every day and sit and shred it but honestly our small paper is 60 cents a day and with the money i spend on a paper i could buy a bale of straw for the same price and have twice the volume. i am hoping this fall i can bag up (or just make piles) of fallen leaves and save those for use over next summer. SOOOO...... i'm hoping 1 bale of straw can hold me over for a while with the browns....

You would need to shred the straw for best results. One thing you can do is spread your grass clippings on your driveway in the hot sun, or on a similar surface, and let them dry out completely. They are then considered browns.

was thinking about spreading some of the grass on the driveway but not all- hubby will flip if i did all! LOL and yea- i was going to spread some in the yard and let him mow over it. that'll do the trick huh?

Sounds like a good plan!