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Day 1 of conditioning your straw bales video

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Here we are. It's day number one for our conditioning process. This bale has had nothing done. It was just delivered. We just put it in place. What we're going to do is take our bag of fertilizer, we figure out what kind of fertilizer to use and for day number one, we're going to apply...

<p>Here we are. It&#39;s day number one for our conditioning process. This bale has had nothing done. It was just delivered. We just put it in place. What we&#39;re going to do is take our bag of fertilizer, we figure out what kind of fertilizer to use and for day number one, we&#39;re going to apply one half cup. We have a measuring cup here that contains exactly one half cup.</p> <p>Now when we apply it, we want to try and sprinkler it on and get two or three coatings over the top of the bale. That way we get it nice and even. If you just dump it all in one splash, it can get in chunks on the bale. We just want to kind of spread the fertilizer out, sprinkler it on two or three coatings, so we get a nice, even distribution. All the way from edge to edge and from end to end, so you get a nice, even coating. Just like a little snow fall over the top of your bales.</p> <p>Once you get the fertilizer on, all you do is grab your hose, use the spray setting if you can and spray it about sixty seconds, just washing that fertilizer down into the bale. Don&#39;t be concerned if all the fertilizer doesn&#39;t melt away into the bale. You don&#39;t want to spend ten minutes putting cold water on this bale because that&#39;s going to cool off the bacteria. We just want to spend maybe thirty, forty five seconds, maybe sixty seconds, about a gallon, maybe a gallon and a half of water at the most washing that fertilizer into the bale.</p> <p>You&#39;re going to see this is much easier to get the fertilizer to wash in when you&#39;re using the synthetic fertilizer because it&#39;s smaller crystals, tends to dissolve more quickly. If you&#39;re using the organic stuff, it can be harder work all that material into the bale. That could be difficult.</p> <p>Don&#39;t worry about it. If there&#39;s a little bit of blood meal, or your feather meal, or your [inaudible 01:45], whatever you&#39;re using that&#39;s organic and that stays on top of the bale, that&#39;s okay. Don&#39;t worry about that. The bacteria will come up to the surface and grab that fertilizer and pull it down into the bale. You can use your hose to wash that down in there.</p> <p>The other option is to put some water in a bucket, especially if the water&#39;s really cold. Early in the season, ground temperatures are cold, which means the water coming out of your tap is going to be really cold. You can just put water in buckets and then let that bucket warm up overnight and then tomorrow, put a gallon or so into a sprinkling can and just sprinkle that over the top.</p> <p>Now, you don&#39;t get the force of the water spray down into the bale so that&#39;s the only disadvantage of doing this, but the warm water makes up for that. The fact that this water is warmed up to air temperature at least five, ten degrees warmer than what that water is coming out at the end of that hose can really have an impact on your bales. Use a watering can, sprinkler the water on top of the bale and melt that fertilizer down in.</p> <p>That&#39;s it for day one. I&#39;ll be right back with day number two.</p>