African Keyhole Garden

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.

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.

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And there it is. I planted it with calendula, sweet basil, Jericho lettuce, borage, and 5 Color Silver Beet Swiss chard. 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.