Keyhole gardening

As Oklahoma summers continue to get hotter and drier, gardeners are looking for ways to prolong the growing season while responsibly maintaining resources.

Not all keyhole gardens are round. In the photos below we illustrate how we created a small rectangular overgrown space into a good looking, functional, sheet mulched square keyhole garden. Doing this instead of rows in...

There’s a swearing-in ceremony for new Peace Corps Volunteers taking place in our garden right now, which has caused me to stop moving plants around long enough to write a new post. A couple …

In essence, a keyhole garden is a raised planting area, complete with a composting bin in the middle, to ensure equal distribution of nutrients.

homesteading, self-reliance, self-sufficiency, natural livestock keeping, gardening, food preservation, cheesemaking, alternative energy,

Do I need walls for the gardens or can I just kind of pile everything? My understanding is in permaculture not to plant rows of vegetables all separate from each other, but how do I decide what and where to place things?

2 raised key-hole gardens. Each garden is 8'x12'. Utilized companion planting in most areas. Soil consists of composted cow manure, peat moss, top soil and vermiculite/perlite blend.

Keyhole Gardens: A Drought Tolerant Composting Garden

Key-hole bed at my veggie garden. Photo: Niveevi

Now I know that last year wasn’t a ‘typical’ growing season. Most of the fruit and veg that would usually grow well in the garden struggled with wet weather, hoards of slugs and …