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