Of course you can. Many do. If you'll search the forum using "straw mulch" you'll find many discussions about it.

Good luck with your garden.

Dave

Straw will help to keep the soil moist and will hold down weeds by shading them out. It will also keep the fruits of vine crops from resting on the soil. Use it liberally, several inches thick and over all the soil, not just at the base of plants.

I think some people use hay, but I have not because hay is grass and I think the hayseed it drops will grow. The seeds have been removed from straw by threshing.

Jim

Straw and hay both have seeds. I've had straw that was so heavy with seed you would swear it was deliberate. That's one of the main reasons I bought a few chickens. First, I would toss a bale into my neighbor's chicken yard and let them pick out the seeds, then I raked it up again and put it on my garden. Then she got rid of her chickens, forcing me to buy my own.

Lay either one down fairly thick, and you shouldn't have a problem. If a shoot appears, just pull it up and lay it across the top of the other mulch. Weed becomes mulch.

Sue

"I've had straw that was so heavy with seed you would swear it was deliberate."

Sue, what kind of seeds? Weed seeds or wheat or oats? My dad used straw under tomatoes which he let sprawl. I don't remember a problem with seeds, but that was many years ago and I was a little kid, who maybe wouldn't have noticed.

Jim

Locally for me, most straw is rye straw. When I used it, I had plenty of rye seedlings pop up from the mulch. This was a real problem, since I had used the straw to mulch a high-density garlic bed. :-(

If you can find second-cutting hay, or alfalfa hay, it will have fewer weeds. So will marsh hay, provided that it is "real" marsh hay, not just pasture hay sold by that name. If you can get to know a local farmer, and explain what you want the hay for, they can probably point you in the right direction.

Perhaps better yet, contact a local landscaper, and ask for grass clippings. You might be able to get unlimited weed-free mulch this way, and the fresh clippings will feed your earthworms... but be sure that the clippings contain no weed killer.

Hi everyone thanx for all the input. So here,s what i did i noticed a round bale of what i thought was straw in my back yard.......i have an acre back there!.....Anyway i went back there and got some of it and put it all around the base of my vegi's today i realized it wasn't straw but hay pretty much when i was almost done. I know i know that sounds pretty stupid but it was pretty yellow stuff i've lived here for a year and it's been there since i've been here and from the way it looks it's been there alot longer than that(kinda moldy and wet looking)anyway i was wondering if anyone knew maybe how long it takes for the seeds on it to die or whatever there wasn't anything growing from it or nothing. I was also wondering if i'm supposed to be putting it around the base of my plants. Sorry if this is a repeat question all i can find in the forum is people putting mulch in the rows and not actually at the base of the plant

I've been mulching with hay for about 40 years. I look for spoiled hay, but not hay that has been cut so late that it's full of weed seed. Only once did I get hay that I couldn't use. My entire garden in permanent beds with permanent mulch of hay and paths mulched in wood chips.