Mulch shortages

[b54red]

Bigdaddy, the easiest way to get rid of most of the seed is to just buy your hay 3 or 4 months early and leave it out so that it gets rained on. Don't stack the bales and if you cut the baling to loosen the bundle it helps. Over a few months most of the seed in the bails will sprout and you will have even more hay to use and you won't have to do nearly as much weeding after you spread it.
I once used fresh hay on my young onion plants and ended up pulling up quite a few of them trying to weed the hay which had sprouted by the thousands and I could barely see the onions.

[dice]

Sour hay (or any other hay) should probably come with the
same aminopyralid warning as horse manure: possible
contamination with a broadleaf herbicide that deforms tomato
plants at very low concentrations. (One can probably mix it with
some dirt and sprout some fast-growing buckwheat in it to test,
since aminopyralid also attacks buckwheat plants.)

[BigdaddyJ]

Dice, I have been getting my straw bales at a local Agway. What are the odds it might have some residual herbicide in it? I am an organic grower. I never thought much about that? My tomatoes never seemed to suffer with the straw mulch. But now you have me thinking.....?????

B54red...thanx for the good tip. After I pull all the #$%@!#! baby straw plants I do lay them on top of the straw mulch as extra mulch. I'd rather not have to be pulling them though. Thanx

[dice]

Most "straw" bales are wheat straw. Rye straw and oat straw
are also available in some parts of the country. I have not heard
of any of those showing animopyralid contamination, but
this document seems to indicate that it would be possible
to find it in wheat straw if the wheat farmer fertilized his
field with contaminated manure:
http://www.manurematters.com/na/en/hay_sales.htm

Hay, usually Timothy or Orchard Grass, is where the animals
producing the contaminated manure get the aminopyralid
from in the first place, so the risk from hay bales is probably
greater than the risk from straw bales. (Far more wheat is
fertilized synthetically than fertilized with manure.) You would
not find it in alfalfa hay, because alfalfa itself is apparently
susceptible to the herbicide effect of aminopyralid.

[b54red]

Well I have been using the cypress mulch for about 6 weeks and have to say it is working very well. I learned early to put down some sheets of newspaper as a weed barrier before applying the mulch. Putting down the newspaper turned out to be the most difficult part of the operation because of the high winds we have had all spring. Solved that by wetting each layer as soon as it was down so it wouldn't blow away before I could put on the mulch. I don't know how difficult it will be to remove it and store it when the year is over but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I still get the occasional weed come through; but far less than with other mulches I have tried. It also seems to retain the soil moisture better than anything else I have tried. The biggest drawback is the cost so I hope it is not too difficult to reuse. It really does make the beds look much nicer and it is really easy to maintain. Below is a picture of one of the beds not long after mulching.