keyhole garden

KEYHOLE GARDEN
my cowgirl sister in law sent me an article on how to
do a keyhole garden
i had not heard of that before
i read the article at this link on keyhole gardening

basically you lay out a circular garden of  8-10 feet
in the center you do at least 1 foot circle
this is where you will place a cage for your compost pile
then you lay out a wedge of the circle like a piece of pie
cut out of a pie

then you do the sides of the garden with stone bricks etc
also lining the pie wedge
you fill the garden with dirt compost newpapers etc

in the center circle you add things much like you would
in a compost pile grass clippings, dirt, leaves, newspapers,
kitchen veggie scraps putting it in layers

when you get through you have a circular garden with a central
compost pie with a pie wedge that you can step into to work
on your garden and to get to your compost pile


when its viewed from above it looks like an old keyhole

this method is used in africa and countries where there is
a scarcity of food and of water
they use whatever materials they can find
rocks straw cow dung etc
and are able to raise food for their families
the stones are high enough usually 3 ft to keep the
cattle from getting in the garden

i couldnt stand it after reading this article
i had to build me a keyhole garden

i had an old circular water trough that was rusted out on the
bottom  and moved into my yard
i filled it with composted garden soil that i had stored on my
property-was good garden soil mainly hill country soil from
lady bug or the natural gardener-they had already done all the
work on the soil
all i have to do is keep it going with the addition of compost as
i need it

in the center i put a 1 foot circular roll of old chicken wire i had
in the center i filled it with leaves manure my compost i had made
and barnyard compost from the natural gardener
i then watered the compost well to get things started

i then laid out a pie wedge leading to the center compost pile

over time the goodies will diffuse out into the circular garden
i will keep the center compost pile watered and the
plants watered as needed

in the garden portion i planted
lettuce onions swiss chard kale broccoli cilantro arugula asian greens
spinach and fava beans to climb over the wire compost bin
later this spring i will plant basil and malabar spinach there also
the chard kale arugula and onions will last into the the summer

this summer i will work on getting my soil to taper down from the
circular compost pile out to the edges of the garden

except for the plants i bought to plant here i already had all the
supplies to build this
key hole garden



this should work great for small areas limited for space
think of it as a circular raised square foot garden with a
compost pile in the middle and a wedge to walk into the middle

will report my produce reports later this year

the organicgreen gardener