Keyhole gardens are commonly seen in permaculture because they are beautiful and productive, ideal for small spaces, and can accommodate a variety of plants, annual vegetables, herbs, and flowers. …
There are numerous benefits to installing a keyhole garden and the process is not difficult at all. Learn how to build, plant and maintain one here.
A keyhole garden is a cleverly designed raised bed with built-in composting system for growing more food in less space.
Keyhole gardens are commonly seen in permaculture because they are beautiful and productive, ideal for small spaces, and can accommodate a variety of plants, annual vegetables, herbs, and flowers. …
Bonus: all the ingredients - old boxes, newspapers, and leaves - are totally free!
Beautiful garden! Image & Instructions at Fantastic Gardens, Melbourne Australia Keyhole gardens are more than pretty or convenient, they give more planting space per square foot than row garde…
Keyhole gardening is a terrific way to grow plants in small spaces, poor soil, or dry climates. Use these ideas to start your keyhole garden.
This method of raised bed gardening is an ideal solution if you live in a challenging climate
Despite all of its function, the setup of a keyhole garden is fairly simple. Using a garden hose, mark out a circle about six feet wide. Then, mark a notch out of the circle roughly a foot wide that narrows slightly toward the center (think of a slice of pizza with a flattened end instead of a point). At the center of
The name keyhole garden is due to its shape. The shape of the keyhole garden is like an old-fashioned skeleton key lock. the concept of…
Even with less-than-optimal soil, you can grow a bumper crop of healthy fruits and vegetables with the unique design of keyhole gardening.
This method of raised bed gardening is an ideal solution if you live in a challenging climate
See how we built our keyhole garden bed. We measured it in the center of our mandala garden design. See lots of keyhole garden bed layouts and designs
What Is A Keyhole Garden The term ‘keyhole garden, comes from shape of the garden area itself. This is basically a round structure roughly about…
Beautiful garden! Image & Instructions at Fantastic Gardens, Melbourne Australia Keyhole gardens are more than pretty or convenient, they give more planting space per square foot than row garde…
Two weekends, a lot of STUFF and we have a garden. The idea for our "Keyhole" garden came from a work friend of Flip's. An article about t...
A keyhole garden is a cleverly designed raised bed with built-in composting system for growing more food in less space.
Grow your vegetables in a raised bed and compost at the same time with this efficient keyhole garden bed design.
Last week, I wrote about the many social and ecological problems that we face as a society and linked them to the systems we use to meet our needs. After that post, I received a lot of feedback from people offline. In fact, from the analytical data I have access to, that last post quickly became one of the most read and shared pieces I've written here. Many said they had been thinking similarly along these lines, somehow intuiting the challenges we face, but not quite connecting it to our basic system of production. Once you understand that our problems flow from the way we meet our needs, you begin to see how simple acts like gardening or saving money on home energy can have a high positive impact on society. But what I've really been learning is that there are a lot of people out there like us, who are motivated and inspired to "be the change they want to see in the world." They want to live better lives and understand that means living in a way that's better for others, too. We want to build Lillie House at that powerful intersection between the vision of a better world and the practical, life-enhancing actions that will bring it into reality. So, I will need a little time to take your feedback into consideration as I continue that post, showing how we can "solve all the world's problems in a garden" as Permaculture Designer Geoff Lawton often says. In the meantime, lets talk gardening. Keyhole Bed Design Right now, I have our some of our beds "undressed" for maintenance, so it's a good time to show some of the hidden features that have worked well for us. These aren't the prettiest pictures, but they're a great "behind the scenes" look into our gardening. At Lillie House, all of our beds use "keyhole design" to minimze work and maximize growing space. This diagram shows an example of a basic keyhole design that anyone can use to "makeover" their garden: I'd like to report that we've been gardening this way for years and it's one of those classic Permaculture techniques that's really worked well for us. In fact, these days I can't really imagine gardening any other way. The basic idea is that if you have a 10' by 10' garden space and you divide in into rows, you might get 4 tightly spaced rows, or 40' of growing space, with 60' of compacted path area that's a perfect space for weeds and a poor space for root infiltration to help your crops. Such a garden will be a tight, difficult place to maneuver and work in, too. Worse, if rows aren't perfectly on contour, university extension research has shown such rows act as drainage ditches, channeling water away from where it can help plants. But, if you divide this same sized garden into two larger 4' beds with a 2' row in the middle, you can have 80' of growing space! At 4', you can still reach to the center of each bed without ever having to step on it. This larger row will be easier to work in and you'll be less likely to accidentally damage plants. But if yo go even further and reduce that path to 5 feet of length, creating a "keyhole" you get another 10' or more of space. Meanwhile, you only have 10' of path space to weed and maintain. You can reshape the path to have more room in the middle, where you work, and less room at the enterance, where weeds would start to encroach. And now that you have a "keyhole" bed, it can easily be designed to catch and store water, and aid in composting in place. Above, you can see where I've raked off the mulch that used to cover a keyhole path and used it to mulch the bed for the winter. You can also see how I've surrounded the outsides of this bed, especially the vulnerable corners, with "fortress plantings" of perennial vegetables and herbs to keep out the weeds. The high number of perennials also helps the beds store nitrogen and other nutrients over winter and host beneficial insects and micro-organisms. Perennial plants are one of our great natural allies in building soil. With the paths raked out, you can also see that the paths and "keyhole" (which is sometimes called a "node") are dug out level, "on contour" so that they catch water behind the slightly raised beds. This helps soak water into the soil where it's most useful to our plants. You can also see that the access points are kept small to minimize weed intrusion, but there are roomy "nodes" where one can sit and have more work space. This takes advantage of the best of both worlds, narrow paths for reduced maintenance, and wide paths for easier work where it's needed. And finally, these pictures demonstrate the huge amount of continuous mulching we do in our garden. For me, the use of continuous deep mulching is problably the number one element to reduce garden work. In a keyhole bed, the path can be treated as a "mulch basin" where weeds are kept in check through heavy mulching. This heavy mulch hosts micro organisms that can also help clean water and break down contaminants. Come next spring, most of this mulch will be broken down to the point where it will pretty much look like beautiful soil. A nice edible groundcover of self-sowing vegetables will already be well established and perennials will begin to bloom and yield for us: (keyhole beds in summer, with annuals, perennials, vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers.) So, to recap, here are a few tips to consider as you plan your garden for next year. 1. Keyhole beds make the best use of space and eliminate weeding, watering and fertilizing work. 2. You can design your keyhole beds to catch water and infiltrate it like a rain garden. 3. You can design your keyhole bed so that the path acts as a "mulch basin," which breaks down into compost to feed the garden. This compost can periodically be used to mulch the beds. 4. You can design keyhole beds with "fortress plantings" of perennial plants around the outside, especially at the corners. Good Fortress plants include oregano, thyme, creeping chamomile, clover, perennial alliums like chives, and bulbing flowers like daffodils. 5. A permanant keyhole "path" means we never have to step on our beds, so we never compact the soil, and as a result, we never have to dig the beds! Keyhole beds are a great approach for "no dig" gardening. 6. 4 to 5 feet of bed witdth allows most people to comfortably reach to the center of a bed from both sides, so a 10 to 12 foot "keyhole garden" is an ideal size. Larger gardens can be collections of smaller keyhole gardens. A keyhole garden designed in that way is a classic Permaculture approach that minimizes maintenance and puts nature to work for us. It's an approach we reccomend and one that's worked well for us for years. If you've done keyhole gardening before, I'd like to hear about your experiences, positive and negative.
Keyhole gardens are commonly seen in permaculture because they are beautiful and productive, ideal for small spaces, and can accommodate a variety of plants, annual vegetables, herbs, and flowers. …
Keyhole garden beds offer easy access to produce, provide plants with nutrient-rich compost, and use less water. Learn how to create a keyhole garden.
Keyhole garden beds are commonly seen in permaculture gardens. These beautiful, productive gardens are ideal for small spaces. For more info, read on.
Explore vegetable garden options that conserve water and build soil - inspired by the African keyhole garden.
Find out what a keyhole garden is, why it's so sustainable, and learn how to make your own. Keep reading for the full story.
As Oklahoma summers continue to get hotter and drier, gardeners are looking for ways to prolong the growing season while responsibly maintaining resources.
Is your backyard too hot and dry to cultivate the vegetables you have only dreamed of? Keyhole gardens were developed for the sole purpose of maximum crop output in the hottest and driest of conditions. Their low cost, low maintenance, and versatility make them a desirable gardening option for your yard and for gardening across […]
Qu'est ce qu'un jardin en trou de serrure (key hole garden), quels sont ses avantages et comment en fabriquer un. Nos conseils en pas à pas et en images.
What Is A Keyhole Garden The term ‘keyhole garden, comes from shape of the garden area itself. This is basically a round structure roughly about…
Keyhole gardens are commonly seen in permaculture because they are beautiful and productive, ideal for small spaces, and can accommodate a variety of plants, annual vegetables, herbs, and flowers. …
Having a keyhole garden nets you a raised bed that fertilizes itself and a way to make use of your compost materials.
Two weekends, a lot of STUFF and we have a garden. The idea for our "Keyhole" garden came from a work friend of Flip's. An article about t...
Envie d'un carré potager surélevé auto-fertile pour réussir la culture de vos légumes sans trop vous fatiguer. Ce modèle de potager en bois non-traité me plaît beaucoup et je vais vous expliquer pourquoi.
A keyhole garden is a circular raised bed. You grow crops in the outer circle and the center portion has a composting basket. Due to…
I wanted to see what would happen if I combined all of the classic permaculture methods into one beastly raised bed.… by theferalone
A keyhole garden should be no larger than about six feet in diameter. Any bigger than that, and the water and nutrients will have a hard time reaching...
A keyhole garden is a cleverly designed raised bed with built-in composting system for growing more food in less space.
While I took a week's break during the book giveaway, I worked on my own book and we finished our African keyhole garden. I told you about our plan in my Spring Clean-Up post, and Dan got right to work on. What exactly is an African keyhole garden? It's a brilliant concept for raised bed gardening. It combines growing, composting, and watering into one manageable system. It's ideal for areas that have inadequate rainfall. The round bed is roughly 6-feet across with a compost container in the middle and a built-in path to easily add compostable materials and water. It can be any height one chooses. Resembles a keyhole overhead, hence the name. The keyhole wall can be constructed from anything: stone, logs, boards, sticks, wattle fencing, metal or fiberglass roofing panels, even sheets of plastic. Dan decided to use brick for ours because we still have a huge pile of bricks leftover from when we tore down the old fireplace and chimney ten years ago. Here's how he did it. The first step was to level the ground and calculate how many bricks would be needed for a 6-foot diameter keyhole garden. He leveled a base for the footer with gravel and sand. Brick footer filled in with clay subsoil. The brick wall goes on top of that. It took about three days to get to this point. Compost bin made with ½-inch hardware cloth. It's about 20" across. Keyhole gardens are typically filled lasagna garden style, but we did ours more hugelkultur style with chunks of wood on the bottom. Spaces between the wood chunks were filled with woodchips & topsoil. I tossed in old corn cobs and husks, and bones leftover from making broth. > Almost done. Topsoil, compost, and fine woodchips continue the fill. A cover could be added to the compost bin if desired. The beauty of this system is that the compost bin is built in specifically for the keyhole bed. Contents of the compost are higher than the soil, which is sloped from the edge of the compost to the keyhole wall. Because the bin is made of hardware cloth, moisture, nutrients, humus, and organic matter automatically leach into the soil. Planted with calendula, sweet basil, Jericho lettuce, borage, and Five Color Silver Beet Swiss chard. And there it is. Every day now, I'm out there inspecting for little seedlings! I'll keep you updated on how well it works. Parting shot: Dan got his blueberry bushes transplanted too. For more information, pictures, and ideas, check out this article, "Keyhole Garden" at insteading.com. African Keyhole Garden © May 2020 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com
Grow your vegetables in a raised bed and compost at the same time with this efficient keyhole garden bed design.
A keyhole garden is a circular raised bed. You grow crops in the outer circle and the center portion has a composting basket. Due to…
Two weekends, a lot of STUFF and we have a garden. The idea for our "Keyhole" garden came from a work friend of Flip's. An article about t...
