Startups: Like Straw Bale Gardens

I planted my first ever straw bale garden. I did it a bit late so I might not get a good crop. The first thing I had to do was get the bales. Then for two weeks you have to condition the bales. This is a process of putting high nitrate fertilizer on top of them, and watering the bales each day. The bales weigh around 70 pounds dry and 150 when soaked. 

After about two weeks the bales start heating up, supposedly to around 130 degrees or more! In fact they can ignite spontaneously! So be careful. Then you have to put on less fertilizer and keep watering. What's happening, is the straw is starting to break down. It's becoming compost.

The reason I decided to grow a straw bale garden is upon reading an article about it, a few key factors stood out to me. 

• The crop should grow twice as big as when in soil.
• Very few weeds to weed out.
• You can almost never over water.
• The bails hold water so you can skip a few days and not kill the plants from dehydration.
• You can put the garden almost anywhere: on cement, on a deck, on rock, it doesn't have to be on dirt. 

Okay, I'm sold. I want a garden twice as big with hardly any weeds! So far my garden is tiny. The growth has been small. But I did plant it the 1st week of June, and most of the seeds I started. 

When I walk the dog in the neighborhood I'm surprised to find that, many gardens are giant. Three times the size of my growth. I guess if straw bale gardens are like startups, I'm right on the mark. All the neighbor gardens are big companies that started small. They have had time to mature. I'm just at the beginning, just like the startup I'm in now, Kazamster. I just joined at the beginning of June, and they launched April 1st 2016. 

So far it seems to be growing like my garden, a tiny bit each day that you can hardly notice. Tom tells us that Kazamster is getting an average of 5 new sign ups a day. Wait! That's noticeable! That's huge to me! We have hardly done any marketing. I'm myself have been getting up to speed as to where they are when I joined, re-reading the Traction book, and developing the traction plan.  

There must have been some startup fertilizer sprinkled on Kazamster. Sprouts are coming up! It's so beautiful to see a startup growing. Just like my straw bale garden, it makes me happy.

I'm hoping my giant pumpkin will take off and grow a grand champion, and that Kazamster will too!

 Enjoy your gardens ~ and keep building your startups!

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