How to Refresh a Keyhole Garden
Keyhole gardens produce an amazing amount of food with little effort, but to keep them productive, you'll want to renew the bed every now and then. Here's how.
Keyhole gardens produce an amazing amount of food with little effort, but to keep them productive, you'll want to renew the bed every now and then. Here's how.
This week is the 2nd anniversary of the keyhole garden. By my estimates, after 725 days of continuous production, we’ve raised 36 crops and harvested over 150 lbs of herbs and veggies from this 50sq ft space.
Gardener’s Log : Keyhole Garden day 585. Well, if you want to hammer a keyhole garden into submission, making it rain followed by high winds and near 80° heat, followed by overnight lows that dip into the 30s, followed by more near 80° temperatures again, is certainly one way of doing it. 40 degree plus temperature swing in 24 hours The poor pumpkin, which was thriving a couple weeks ago, is done in, as is most of the [keep reading...]
Gardener's Log : Keyhole Garden date 569. Now that we're several weeks into fall, the temperatures are making their annual wobble between hot and cold. The days are still in the 80's with the occasional tip into the low 90's, but the nights are now dipping into the mid-50's and flirting with the upper 40's a couple days a week. For most of the plants here, those big temperature swings and longer nights are a signal to wrap things up [keep reading...]
It's day 548 of production for the keyhole garden. The recent heatwave ended what was left of the tomatoes and most of the sweet peppers, but the squash is doing great. Plus, I discovered some garlic.
After 521 days of continuous production, the early summer veggies in the keyhole garden are all played out, but the mid-summer crops--beans, squash, and pumpkins--are doing just fine. The second half of summer and most of early fall is brutally hot and dry, so I'm going to give part of the bed a couple week's rest before transplanting the late summer and early fall stuff.
It's been a month since I posted on the progress on my year round keyhole food garden so I thought now would be a good time for an update with a few photos.
A year after building my keyhole garden I've learned a few lessons. Here's a quick list of tips to keep your keyhole garden happy and productive through the growing season.
The keyhole garden is in that awkward transitional stage between Winter and Spring. Winter veggies and herbs are petering out while spring plants like tomatillos, peppers, cucumbers and onions are just getting started.
Warm weather followed by a week of rain has really kicked the leafy greens into high gear. On the front left you can see the remainder of the romaine heads giving one last push. Meanwhile on the right, it's a motley assortment of loose leaf greens, spinach and cilantro. One head of broccoli remains as does the red cabbage (back and center right). The dill I have planted around the perimeter of the compost bin (center) is thick, leafy and [keep reading...]