I'm not sure you can find it completely seed free :-( I have only used it once and had a wheat field pop up the followng spring!! That was enough for me! Even the straw bales used on construction sites start sprouting in spring.

I think it is just very hard to get the straw stalks in any kind of bundled state without some of the grain/chaff remaining. If you can buy it loose, perhaps giving it a good shake can reduce the seeds but I doubt you will remove them all.

I bought some from Tractor Supply this year. It was a lot more expensive than previous purchases but had very few seeds. I am still getting wheat popping up but in lesser amounts than past years.

Agree with the others. I have seen people claim on the web that straw is seed free but in my experience that has never been true. Every straw bale I have ever gotten has had seeds in it. If you want to avoid most of the seeds you can either take a fresh bale, break it open, and use a garden fork to toss it around and the seeds will be easier to avoid. Or you can allow the bales sit over winter and a lot of the seeds will rot, especially is you cut the twine around the bale beforehand.

Rodney

What you need is a good reliable source, and that can take some experimentation. I am fortunate to have a feed and garden center a couple of blocks away that has straw with few seeds. On the contrary, the bales I got at Lowes were just chock full of shafts of wheat which, predictably, sprouted all around my garden. It was easy enough to pull out, but since I was using it as mulch its purpose was to prevent weeds, not sow them.

First, make sure you are buying straw and not hay. I get bales of straw at a local farm and garden center to use as garden mulch. Occasionally I will get a wheat sprout but for the most part, it is a perfect mulch for garlic and potatoes. I think I may have paid $10/bale last year.