keyhole garden

update-6/30

to see the process of building a keyhole garden, scroll down below the row of asterisks

 as you can see, many of the plants are thriving, others are struggling.  no question about the basil or the marigolds-they both are thriving!

 the super sweet tomato is very happy and getting larger-it is to the right of the compost cage.  the box car willie tomato is doing so poorly that you cannot see it clearly, it is to the left of the compost cage.

lemon cukes are doing very well.  we tied them up to the trellis today in the hope of training them to grow vertically.  

stay tuned for more photos!

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after seeing photos of a keyhole garden built by a group of young women in africa, we decided to build one in the demonstration garden.  as always, we are doing this as inexpensively as possible and used only supplies we already had or collected from our members.  

the first step was to draw an 8 foot circle.  we did this by sinking a post in the middle of the area, attaching a piece of string that was 4 feet long and using that string to guide another post to make a circle.

before we removed the center post, we drew a 2 foot circle around it to mark where the compost basket would go.

 we hammered 5 stakes into the ground to support the basket.

 we then built the basket with poultry netting

then it was time to start laying the blocks.  the first layer was the hardest.  to make the structure secure, we had to make sure each one was level.  that meant we had to do a lot of digging and setting for each block.  and yes, we used an actual level.

layer two.  we had to make sure that we cantilevered the layers to provide strength to the structure.

 we went with 4 block layers making it waist high.  this is just the second layer.

to fill it, we put a collection of old phonebooks and egg crates at the bottom.  they will slowly degrade and will also help retain moisture in the bed.

next was about 2 feet of sticks and branches from the big mulch piles that we have been getting.

we added nearly 2 cubic yards of leaves.  we expect the sticks and leaves to compact as we build up the layers.  this will make filling it to the top a challenge but we are using the rainy weather to our advantage.  the first day, we stopped after adding sticks and let the rain overnight fall into the bed.  on the second day, we had multiple showers fall on the leaves.  we will add more layers organic/humus material over several days as the rainfall causes the previous layers to compact a bit.

from this view, you can see how the compost cage is exposed on one side to allow for aeration which will help speed up the decomposition.  the placement of the cage in the center means turning the compost will be almost impossible but the walkway will make adding more material and watering it possible.

 after filling the garden with layers of compost, leaves and soil, we added plants to the bed and the blocks.

 the plants in the blocks around the edge serve an important purpose.  they were selected because they attract beneficial insects.

 marigolds are very hardy, help repel deer and attract hover flies.

 tomatoes aren't generally recommended for key hole gardens but we added a couple anyway just to see why they have been blacklisted.

cosmos are so vibrant and cheerful and they help attract hover flies, lacewings and parasitic wasps.

stay tuned for more photos-watch the progress of the garden as the plants grow and mature!