How Many Holes Does A Straw Have

It’s the debate dividing the internet – how many holes does a straw have? Virgin Radio 15 Aug 2022, 07:17 People have been disagreeing on the internet recently. Very surprising, right? However, for once, the arguments aren’t about politics or sport, but rather because of – quite literally – a straw poll. Specifically, people are debating how many holes a straw has,

Is it one or two? Or, actually, is it none? Yes, a new YouGov poll has been dealing with the big issue of our times, and it’s causing quite the discussion.
Some people say that the answer is one, while other people reckon that a straw has two holes – as in, one at each end.
Other people, however, say that, actually, a straw doesn’t have any holes.

It’s simply a sheet of material shaped into a cylinder. The poll, via YouGov America, asked simply “How many holes are there in a straw?” on August 12th, and attracted close to 6000 votes. And the results were very close indeed. In total, 46 percent of people said there is one hole, 47 percent said there are two, and seven percent said that they simply didn’t know! Commenters keenly put their points across.

One person wrote: “It’s one you monsters.” One Twitter user agreed, saying: “If straw has 2 holes then so does a donut.” Another person added: “A hole has three dimensions, not two. Since depth is required, but a bottom isn’t, a straw has (or more accurately is) one hole with two openings.” Whilst there wasn’t an option for zero holes, several people gave their thoughts on this possibility in the comments section.

Someone said: “Look, if you tell the waiter there’s a hole in your straw, they’re gonna get you a new one. So, clearly, unless it’s defective, a straw has no holes.” Meanwhile, someone else joked: “I’d need to see the straw.” So, what do you reckon? It is one, two, or none? : It’s the debate dividing the internet – how many holes does a straw have?

Does a straw have two holes?

Opinion: How many holes are there in a straw? The answer may surprise you How many holes are there in a straw? This was the question recently asked of 4,116 British adults, It turns out that it is quite a divisive question. The options given to the survey participants were “one”, “two” or “don’t know”.

Just 4 per cent of people said they didn’t know, while the remaining 96 per cent were relatively evenly split.54 per cent went for one hole, while 42 per cent plumped for two. The two-holers might argue that there is one hole at the bottom of the straw and another hole at the top, while the one-holers might insist that this was, in fact, just one long hole.

for myself, I also gave people the option of choosing zero holes. Of the roughly 2000 respondents to my poll, about 14 per cent went for this option, while 59 per cent went for one hole and 22 per cent for two holes. So what is the correct answer? Well, that depends on your interpretation of the question.

To a mathematician, the problem of classifying how many holes there are in an object falls squarely within the realm of topology. You can think of topology as geometry – the of shapes – but where the shapes are made of dough. In topology, the actual shapes of objects themselves are not important; instead objects are grouped together by the number of holes they possess.

For example, a topologist sees no difference between a cricket ball, a baseball, or even a Frisbee. If they were all made of dough, they could theoretically be squashed, stretched or otherwise manipulated to look like each other without making or closing any holes in the dough or sticking different parts of it together.

However, to a topologist, these objects are fundamentally different to a bagel, a doughnut or a basketball hoop which each have a hole through the middle of them.
A figure of eight with two holes and a pretzel with three are different topological objects again.
A useful way to get into the mathematicians’ way of thinking about the straw problem is to think of a washer.

How many holes would you say that has? It’s hard to argue that a washer has more than one hole. What about a Polo mint? Again you’d probably agree with Polo’s marketers when they advertised them as “the mint with the hole” (not holes). We wouldn’t usually look at a doughnut, for example, and claim it has one hole in the top and one hole in the bottom.

The long, thin aspect ratio of the straw, and the fact that the two openings are relatively far apart, are perhaps what gives rise to the suggestion of two holes.
But to a topologist, washers, Polos and doughnuts are all topologically equivalent to a straw with a single hole.
So that’s the sense in which topologists might choose to answer the question, but what about the way in which non-mathematicians would understand the word “hole”? Well, if my kids and I decide to dig a hole at the beach our aim is not to dig right through to Australia.

Many people would understand hole as meaning a depression in a solid body. This idea characterises quite a different object to the topologist’s “hole”, but the definition is just as valid. Try telling a golfer that the cavity into which they are aiming to sink their ball isn’t a hole.

The two-holers might argue that the word “hole” is synonymous with the noun “opening”. Certainly, very few people would argue against a straw having two openings. The began life as two holes (one in England and one in France) which eventually joined up. From the perspective of a French person and an English person standing at either end of the tunnel unaware of the project to tunnel beneath the sea, it would be hard to criticise either of them for calling the opening they were standing next to a hole.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by In the same way, I can understand the answer “zero” from a colloquial viewpoint. If someone says to you “my straw has a hole in it”, what you understand by that phrase is that the straw is broken and no longer works as intended.

Arguably you would be pleased to have a straw in its original “hole-free” state. I think this is key to understanding the diverse answers to the question – semantics. The mathematicians’ definition of a hole is actually more similar to the colloquial definition of a tunnel. If you asked people “how many tunnels does a straw have?” (despite it being slightly strange terminology) I expect most people would give the topologists’ expected answer of one.

The key to getting agreement on the answer is to define precisely what we mean by the words in the question. When YouGov posted the results of the survey on there were plenty of replies from people who fell decidedly into the “one”, “two” or “zero” camps and would brook no argument.

The respondents I most admire though, are the people who have the courage to suggest I “don’t know”, expressing an understanding that there are multiple ways to answer the question, depending on the context.
The poll, of course, was never really designed to survey the nation’s knowledge of topology or the straw manufacturing process, but instead to initiate debate.

Judging by the replies on twitter, it was successful in its aim. Kit Yates is a senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and co-director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath : Opinion: How many holes are there in a straw? The answer may surprise you

How many holes are in a beverage straw?

How many holes does a straw have? – Straws have one hole. This is because it is a single piece of material which is connected through the length of the straw. Similar to a donut. It is single column or single opening which connects all the way through to the end.

How many sides does a straw have?

What a straw has is one hole, but two openings. They’re ends of the same hole.

Does a straw have 2 holes or 1 hole?

Is it one or two? Or, actually, is it none? Yes, a new YouGov poll has been dealing with the big issue of our times, and it’s causing quite the discussion. Some people say that the answer is one, while other people reckon that a straw has two holes – as in, one at each end. Other people, however, say that, actually, a straw doesn’t have any holes.

One person wrote: “It’s one you monsters.” One Twitter user agreed, saying: “If straw has 2 holes then so does a donut.” Another person added: “A hole has three dimensions, not two. Since depth is required, but a bottom isn’t, a straw has (or more accurately is) one hole with two openings.” Whilst there wasn’t an option for zero holes, several people gave their thoughts on this possibility in the comments section.

You might be interested: How To Make A Blueberry Jello Shot?

Do pants have 3 holes?

How Many Holes In A Pair of Pants

Beemer

On this MIT alumni mailing-list I’m on, somebody asked: “How many holes does a pair of pants have?” Much discussion ensued. Here is my response. If we mean “hole” in the topological sense, the answer is clearly TWO, If you have an excess of fabric and no fashion sense, you can make a gigantic pair of uncomfortable harem pants by cutting two holes in a very large circle of fabric and then sewing an enormous drawstring along the circumference. You’ll probably also want to gather up the fabric between your legs with some kind of loincloth arrangement or maybe a bunch of creative ruching, and let’s be honest, you’re going to end up with a kind of diaper-like effect that is both awkward and fugly, but the point is, you only have to make two cuts in the fabric to do it. If we’re talking about holes in the sense of an opening into a separated space, then there are plainly THREE : the waist hole and two ankle holes. If you were to put stretchable rubber pants on someone and inflate them with air to, or if you wanted to engage in the time-hallowed sport of, those are the three places where air/ferrets may be introduced to the inter-trouseral space, and also the places that you must ensure are snugly fitted so as to prevent their escape. If we take the word hole to mean a void that tunnels all the way through an object, then the answer is obviously ONE POINT SEVEN EIGHT, Suppose you wanted to make a pair of pants out of a giant block of foam rubber. Why? I don’t know; perhaps after your misadventures with the harem pants and the ferrets you decided to learn something about fashion and have become a haute couture designer. Who am I to criticize? You’re the one who cares about pants. For whatever reason, you’ve decided on foam rubber pants. So be it! You start by boring a hole from the top of the block down through to the bottom. Make it slant a little. Now widen out the top into a general Pelvic Containment Zone. That’s one hole. Now you bore another hole up from the bottom, but only partway through, just to the point where it connects up with the first hole at the edge of the PCZ. So that’s part of a second hole. How much of a hole is it? Well, the typical supermodel’s inseam is about 36″, and most trousers have a regular rise of about 10″, and 10 / (10+36) = 0.22, so that’s about 78% of a hole. Now your fashion creation is almost finished, you just have to make a cut partway up the middle, and Bob’s your uncle: you’ve made PANTS! Let’s hope your uncle, despite being a supermodel, is also a bit uncool, because then you can put the pants on him and now you have SquareBob SpongePants. How delightful for your children. Finally, if by hole we mean a place where there is something missing, where properly there ought to be something but instead there is nothing, then the answer is undoubtedly ZERO, We’re talking about idealized pants here. They consist only and exactly of what they ought, no more and no less, perfect and flawless in their abstraction. By this definition, they CAN’T have holes. So, how many holes does a pair of pants have? (2 + 3 + 1.78 + 0) / 4 = 1.695, which we can round up to the much funnier value of ONE POINT SEVEN, Of course, that’s for idealized pants. For *actual* pants, the number is more variable. First, most pants have a buttonhole at the fly. Some slacks have a little tab thing instead, and of course there are elastic- and drawstring-waist pants that have no buttons, but there are also button-fly jeans. For simplicity, I’m going to assume that they cancel out, leaving us with a net +1 hole by definitions 1 and 3.Then there’s beltloops. Those are holes only in the topological sense, but there are a lot of them. For pants that have them, I think the average number is between 5 and 6. Most pants have beltloops, but there’s a fair fraction that don’t, so that probably brings the expected value back down to, oh, around 4? And then, of course, actual pants get holes as they wear out. This is a much harder number to estimate. I’d say most pairs of pants only get a couple-few holes in them before they get thrown out. I have no idea what the respective dwell times are for new, worn, and discarded clothing, other than that pants don’t stop being pants just because no-one is wearing them, and textiles take a very long time to decay in a landfill. And then of course there are pants that start out with holes in them, sometimes quite a lot of holes, because fashion is ridiculous. Let’s just be arbitrary and call it 2.2. So that’s an additional 2/4 + ~4/4 + 2.2 = THREE POINT SEVEN extra holes for actual pants as opposed to notional pants. (This isn’t even getting into the issue of what happens to the question if you ask it in British English instead of American English and end up asking about underwear.) Point being: I think people tend to invest a lot of unnecessary effort into arguing about questions like this because they falsely assume that there is a single correct answer. Words usually mean more than one thing. They’re not point-like and precise, they’re fuzzy little clouds of meaning. It’s not just denotation; context and connotation exist and matter. So if you actually want to get anywhere in your discussions, it pays to keep the question “so what do you mean by that?” at the ready, and to seek clarification when you perceive a disagreement, rather than operating under the assumption that disagreement necessarily indicates that somebody is wrong.

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Comments:

From: 2016-11-24 03:30 am (UTC)

()

I was always caught up in the discussion of whether pants were plural or singular. Of course, they are plural at the bottom and singular at the top. (Deleted comment)

From: 2016-11-24 06:00 am (UTC)

()

Ooo, good point! They’re arguably holes in the second sense, but I sort of feel like the “enclosed space” wants to have some volume to it to really count. I feel more comfortable counting cargo pockets as involving a hole than I do ordinary pockets.

From: 2016-11-24 06:34 pm (UTC)

()

This was the lawyer’s first thought. Upon having it, I moved to the critical issue: how do we define the term “hole?”As I considered the weave of the fabric, I could see many potential holes. But then we got to the belt loops, and I felt comfortable. At that point, I knew I had 4-5 loopholes to work with. -G

From: 2016-11-24 04:31 pm (UTC)

()

Agreed about the importance of identifying and encysting ambiguous terms. An online community I used to be active on referred this as “tabooing”, by reference to the board game: replace the ambiguous term by its definition(s) in conversation. Awkward, but useful.

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How Many Holes In A Pair of Pants

How many holes are in a donut?

How many holes does a donut have? That’s pretty easy: one. What about a straw? Two (one at each end) or just one? (Isn’t a straw just an elongated donut?) Does a coffee mug have one hole or two? Does a bowl have a hole? If no, then what about a hole in the ground or a hole in a wall that doesn’t pass all the way through? Does a basketball have a hole? A Reddit user asked 1600 people how many holes were in various objects and the results are fantastically all over the place, This is a trivial question, but it reveals something interesting about people’s perceptions. The dictionary definition of “hole” includes two main meanings for the purposes of this question: “an opening through something” and “a hollowed-out place”. Mathematics offers another possible meaning : A hole in a mathematical object is a topological structure which prevents the object from being continuously shrunk to a point.

When dealing with topological spaces, a disconnectivity is interpreted as a hole in the space. Examples of holes are things like the “donut hole” in the center of the torus, a domain removed from a plane, and the portion missing from Euclidean space after cutting a knot out from it. But a hole isn’t clearly defined in math or topology.

From What We Talk about When We Talk about Holes in Scientific American: Here’s my short answer that is also the reason I’m not an algebraic topologist. If you can put it on a necklace, it has a one-dimensional hole. If you can fill it with toothpaste, it has a two-dimensional hole.

For holes of higher dimensions, you’re on your own. That answer isn’t very satisfying. Is there a better way to describe holes? I talked with some of my topologist friends and discovered two things: topologists don’t all agree on what a hole is, and it’s fun and interesting to think about different interpretations of a word whose mathematical definition isn’t completely settled.

I think my larger conclusion, in the spirit of the season, is that holes are like Santa Claus: the true meaning is in your heart. No wonder those poll results are all over the place. But at the same time, it’s interesting that many more people say that donuts have a hole than washers or rubber bands.

language mathematics

How big is a straw hole?

For reference, the standard drinking straw diameter is 0.25′.

Do Coke cans have a straw hole?

If you drink a lot of soda or seltzer in cans, then you may have noticed there is a tab at the top of the can with a little hole in it. It’s not just to open the can. flipping the tab makes it a small straw holder.

How many holes does a balloon have?

A balloon has two holes. The first hole alone would have made the balloon flat in 9 mins and the second hole would have done it in 6 mins. If air leaks out at a constant rate, how long does it take for both the holes together to make the balloon flat? No worries! We‘ve got your back. Try BYJU‘S free classes today! Right on! Give the BNAT exam to get a 100% scholarship for BYJUS courses No worries! We‘ve got your back. Try BYJU‘S free classes today! No worries! We‘ve got your back. Try BYJU‘S free classes today! Open in App Suggest Corrections 0 : A balloon has two holes. The first hole alone would have made the balloon flat in 9 mins and the second hole would have done it in 6 mins. If air leaks out at a constant rate, how long does it take for both the holes together to make the balloon flat?

What makes a straw a straw?

Sometimes there is nothing more refreshing than a cold drink. You walk into a restaurant, get your plastic cup of soda, and stab a plastic straw through the lid. The drink is gone in probably an hour at the most, but that cup and straw will be hanging around in a landfill or ocean long after that.

What is it? What are these things made of that make them stick around for so long? Most drinking straws are made out of polypropylene, a commonly used polymer.
A polymer is a very long chain of molecules all bonded together.
Most plastics that you use are polymers.
Polypropylene is made using propylene gas, a fuel made up of hydrogen and carbon atoms.

The gas goes through a chemical reaction (polymerization), and a lot of the propylene molecules form one very long chain called polypropylene. This makes your drinking straws. Another polymer is polyethylene terephthalate. This is the plastic in soda bottles and is made of long chains of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms.

How do we use it? Plastic has become a large part of our life ever since it came into popular use in the 1960s. It is used everywhere, from hospitals to shoes to food containers. It is inexpensive and easy to shape and use in a variety of ways. Medical use of plastic allows for making better artificial limbs.

Sterile plastic packaging cuts down on the risk of infections. Plastic in the home keeps our houses at more reasonable temperatures and cuts down on energy costs. Using plastic to preserve food keeps it good and fresh for longer. But with all this plastic use, where does it all go after we are done with it? Plastic can’t decompose like other natural materials. Plastic syringes for medical use. Airman 1st Class Dillon Audit, United States Air Force Where does it go? So why can’t plastic break down, like dead leaves? That is because, unlike plastic, bacteria and other little organisms can eat and break down organic matter, such as leaves, and put it back into the soil.

The environment does not naturally produce anything quite like plastic, so the bacteria and organisms do not have the correct body parts to be able to break down and digest plastic. What happens to our plastic straws if they can’t be completely broken down? Do they just lay on the ground? If they did, we would notice! According to the Be Straw Free Campaign through the National Parks Service, Americans use enough plastic straws to fill up 125 school buses worth every day! That obviously means straws must do something.

Well they do! Plastic can break down a little. If left outside, the ultraviolet rays from the Sun will weaken the plastic, and wind, or waves if in the ocean, will slowly break plastic into little pieces. More weather will make even smaller pieces until plastic becomes microplastic, which we can’t see. Plastic drinking straws. Public domain What can we do? With all of the plastic that humans make, use, and throw away, by 2050 it is estimated that there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. But there are ways that we can help.

Don’t just throw it! About a third of the plastic we make and use ends up not in a recycling can, not even in a trash can, but in the ocean somewhere. Be responsible for the trash you make and dispose of it properly. Reuse! Instead of using plastics straws or cups, opt for a reusable version, such as metal. Clean up! If you’re at the beach, pick up any trash or plastic you see lying around and dispose of it properly. Look for more environmentally friendly plastics, such as biodegradable plastics.

Earth friendly label. Public domain. References National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. What We Know About: Plastic Marine Debris, Retrieved from https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/publicatio. National Park Service. The Be Straw Free Campaign,

Retrieved from https://www.nps.gov/articles/straw-free.htm, Wilson, L.2014. The Global Plastic Breakdown: How Microplastics Are Shredding Ocean Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved from https://seagrant.noaa.gov/News/Article/ArtMID/1660/ArticleID. Wolchover, N.2011. Why Doesn’t Plastic Biodegrade? Live Science.

Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/33085-petroleum-derived-plastic-. World Economic Forum.2016. The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of Plastics, Retrieved from http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_New_Plastics_Economy.pdf,

Why does a straw with a hole not work?

Air is lighter than water. So, whenever we suck, lighter air moves inside easily. Water will not. If all holes are closed, then water will move again.

Is a tunnel 1 hole or 2?

Tunnels have one hole (unless they’re special tunnels).

Is a tunnel a hole?

A tunnel is a conceptually simple concept : a hole in the ground, generally horizontal or with a light slope. Highway tunnels that go through mountains, underground metro lines, or urban sewer pipes are types of tunnels that are everywhere. Mathematically, a tunnel is a “subtractive operation” that extracts soil or rock from the ground.

Is a straw a tube or a pipe?

Team Neither –

“An ideal straw has no holes. It is a pipe. If it had a hole, it would leak.” “‘Technically’ a straw has one hole but ‘technically’ it does not. there is a reason we do not use rigorous math to define things outside the scope of academia.” “Infinite. Just keep cutting it in half.” “A straw is a tube” “One whole with two exits”

Does your head hurt yet?!!! And PLEASE, tell us what side you’re on! (‘You Might Also Like’,) : People Are In A Serious Debate Over If A Straw Has One Hole Or Two

Why do people use 2 straws?

Sip Or Stir? Here’s How You’re Supposed To Use Your Cocktail Straw It’s an all-too-common scene. You order a cocktail at the bar. The bartender places it in front of you. And when you’re just about ready to take that long-awaited sip, you’re stopped by tiny straws in your drink – staring you down like the barrel of a very skinny shot gun, taunting you. The worst part about these tiny straws is that they’re shrouded in mystery. Sometimes, there are two of them in your cocktail. Other times, there are none. And sometimes – – bartenders stick them in your drink to get a first taste. What does it all mean? Is it just some cruel bartending joke? Rather than face another straw conundrum at the next happy hour, we got to the bottom of the tiny cocktail straw etiquette.

Our favorite bartender, the director and co-owner of Clover Club in Brooklyn, filled us in on the mystery. Here’s what he said: “Straws were invented to combat ice. So someone can drink something without it ending up in people’s teeth.” There you have it folks. Those straws might be small, but they serve their purpose and they are your friends,

In Macy’s opinion, cocktail straws are small because they look nicer. And also, he offers, “I think smaller straws are more conducive to taking smaller sips. Big straws flow so fast you’re done with the drink in no time.” Bars might want you to order another round, but they definitely want you to be able to walk out the door at the end of the night.

As for the “one vs. two vs.
None” mystery, he explained: “It depends on the drink.
Sometimes two straws are given because one straw is so skinny and the flow is too slow.
Particularly with drinks that have a lot of crushed ice – or that are a little more viscous – it can be frustrating to drink out of.
But long drinks, like collins and fizzes, one is usually fine.

It doesn’t always work that way, but that’s generally how I see it.” Want to read more from HuffPost Taste? Follow us on,, and, : Sip Or Stir? Here’s How You’re Supposed To Use Your Cocktail Straw

What makes a hole a hole?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A hole through a dead tree. A hole is an opening in or through a particular medium, usually a solid body. Holes occur through natural and artificial processes, and may be useful for various purposes, or may represent a problem needing to be addressed in many fields of engineering.

Does a shirt have 2 holes?

Brain Teaser Answer – In this brain puzzle, you need to analyze that there are two see-through holes in the t-shirt. This means that there are 2 holes on the front side of the t-shirt and 2 holes on the back side of the t-shirt. Two holes are there on the sleeves of the T-shirt. One hole is at the neck of the t-shirt and the last hole is at the bottom of the T-shirt. So, the answer to the riddle is 8, There are total 8 holes in the T-shirt.

Do pants have 2 holes or 3?

Pants as topological surfaces – A pair of pants as a plane domain (in blue, with the boundary in red) A pair of pants is any surface that is homeomorphic to a sphere with three holes, which formally is the result of removing from the sphere three with pairwise disjoint closures.

Does a cup have a hole?

Topologist – The coffee mug and donut shown in this animation both have topological genus one. Ponytail, a topologist, states the coffee cup belongs in the genus of one hole. From the topologist’s point of view, the coffee cup definitely has one hole, which corresponds to the opening created by the cup handle.

Can we drink through a straw if there is a hole in the straw?

Air is lighter than water. So, whenever we suck, lighter air moves inside easily. Water will not. If all holes are closed, then water will move again.

Is a straw a tube or a pipe?

Team Neither –

Does your head hurt yet?!!! And PLEASE, tell us what side you’re on! (‘You Might Also Like’,) : People Are In A Serious Debate Over If A Straw Has One Hole Or Two

Is a straw hollow?

Don’t Confuse Straw with Hay (Or Hay with Straw) And what about Straw Bale Gardening? Q. Mike knows a lot, and I love the show (I listen on KSFC; 91.9 FM), but on a recent program he referred to hay and straw as if they were interchangeable. Straw is a stalk, usually a waste product of wheat, that’s used as bedding for barnyard animals. Hay —typically alfalfa or a grass—is used as animal feed.

-Mary Beth in Spokane (Washington)

A. I can think of a lot of times when I spelled out the differences between hay and straw, but never when I confused them. And luckily, I think I’m innocent this time as well, although I could maybe have used slightly clearer language. Mary Beth is referring to a phone call that aired on the show several weeks ago about ‘straw bale gardening’.

I explained that one of my ( many ) objections to this method was the fact that the original material was almost certainly sprayed with lots of chemical pesticides and herbicides. But I added that if you knew an organic farmer who bailed hay, their straw would be clean of chemicals. Wait a minute—did I just confuse the two terms again ? Nope.

But it is a fine line. Straw and hay both begin life the same way—as a field crop. The word ‘hay’ refers to the entire harvested plant, including the seed heads. Most hay is grown to be used as animal feed, and is generally, as Mary Beth correctly notes, timothy, rye, alfalfa or a specialized grass.

But cereal crops like wheat, oats and barley are sometimes grown for animal feed as well as human consumption.
When the plants are left intact and bundled up, it’s hay.
But when the seed heads are removed, the plant stalk that’s left behind is straw, a hollow tube that has many uses, including animal bedding on farms and mulch in,

And if the hay was grown organically—say, to feed certified organic animals, any straw made from that hay would be free of chemicals. In other words, you have to have organic hay (or grain) before you can get organic straw, But the main point in any conversation about these topics is to warn people to be careful that they DON’T get hay when they buy ‘straw bales’.

Straw and hay are often packaged up identically, and many garden centers—and even farmers who sell their extra bales on the roadside—use the term ‘straw’ whether the bale in question is straw or hay. And if you use hay—with all those seed heads intact—as a garden mulch, the seeds will sprout and you’ll become an unintentional grain farmer.

Which happened to me once. I hadn’t yet learned that you have to visually inspect the bales for seed heads, and picked up a batch of hay that was labeled as ‘straw’. The plants that popped up a few weeks after I spread it as mulch taught me two important lessons.

One was to never trust signage.
The other was that wheat is sharp,
Not a good plant to grab in anger bare-handed.
But enough old war stories; let’s move on to ‘straw bale gardening’ itself.Q.
It’s always a struggle to try and work our clay soil.
I read an article about how this problem could be solved by using straw bales instead of my having to schlep bags of manure, peat moss, etc.

to grow my tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers ; but my husband disagrees. What’s your opinion?

-Eileen in Langhorne, PA

A. I think it’s just another of the ‘trends’ that garden writers pick up on when they’re desperate for something ‘new’ to write about, and that they don’t subject to any critical thought. But I was raised by a homicide detective, and I’m always looking for the hole in the logic. And in this case, I came up with five right off the bat.

The bales were almost certainly grown with pesticides—including hideous ‘systemic’ chemicals that are taken up by the plant itself. I only grow organically, and so I’m out before we even start.
The bales don’t retain moisture well; in a dry year you’d have to be watering them every day—perhaps several times a day.
But because straw is packed so tightly, the cores and bottoms do collect a lot of moisture that they can’t get rid of and tend to mold up—especially in a wet year.
You have to buy new bales every year, which is far from sustainable.
The system is lifeless ; designed to avoid soil and compost in favor of chemically-laden straw and nasty chemical,

And that last one is perhaps my biggest issue emotionally. My approach to gardening—forged in the fires of greats like J.I. and Bob Rodale, Sir Albert Howard, Eliot Coleman, John Jeavons, Mel Bartholomew and so many others—is that HEALTHY SOIL is the basis for all gardening.

The answer to clay soil is not to grow in pesticide laden straw bales (which are really heavy, by the way—so the schlepping factor is not decreased one bit).
Raised beds and real containers are a much less toxic and much more sustainable response to clay soil; fill them with a nice mix of potting soil, screened black topsoil, perlite and compost,

( NOT manure or peat moss; those are far from the best soil amendments.) Then you’re away from the clay, growing in a medium that isn’t pre-contaminated with chemicals, drains well in wet years, goes longer between waterings in dry years, and doesn’t need to be replaced every year.

How does a straw look in water?

It actually slows down when it moves through some transparent materials, like glass or water. When light slows down, it changes direction. This ‘refraction’ of light is the reason a straw in water looks bent or broken and why objects viewed through a glass bottle appear distorted.