My smaller secondary garden (maybe 30' x 50')has abysmal soil. I've
been planting winter rye in it for the past three years, but the
improvement has been minimal.

I recently received about 75 bales of rotten grass hay from a local
farmer. A portion of this has already been spread on the garden and
will be disced in this week. However, this farmer has other rotten hay
to get rid of, and he proposed an idea to me.

He suggested we line up 5-6 round bales (the BIG ones) of grass hay
and basically unroll them onto the garden. The idea would be to plant
veggies in between these strips, using the hay as a kind of 2-3 year
mulch layer.

I've thought this through and can't identify any obvious drawbacks,
outside of the fact that I won't be able to plow or disc this area for
a couple of years--at least until the heavy strips really begin to
rot.

Am I overlooking any obvious drawbacks? The hay is relatively free of
weeds.