From Africa to Valhalla: a keyhole garden

Doing it the hard way: one of the National Guard
Soldiers we met in Solerno, Afghanistan tending
his plants at a demonstration farm dedicated to
teaching villagers about irrigation and modern
farming methods. It's a big challenge since Afghans
often reject techniques that they aren't already
familiar with - and the soil there is simply terrible!

Have you ever heard of a garden that waters and fertilizes itself? We certainly had never heard of such a thing until last week when we stumbled across a short video showing women in Africa building a "keyhole garden."

The concept is incredibly simple, and the keyhole raised bed in the video looked very easy to construct with hardly any tools and only very inexpensive materials. Take a look for yourselves:

Keyhole gardens are now popping up all over the world. They reportedly can be made with bricks, stone, rocks - just about anything that will hold the soil in place. Organic material from the garden (lawn clippings, leaves, etc.) and kitchen scraps that one would ordinarily compost are tossed directly into the central core to eventually feed the surrounding soil.

Of course Valhalla must have one - and if this first prototype actually works, there's plenty of room where several more could be built. The following step-by-step pictorial guide shows to how we approached our first keyhole garden project. An important disclaimer: this is a step-by-step guide on how we did things here at Valhalla during our first attempt; it is not a list of instructions on how to build the perfect keyhole garden bed by any stretch of the imagination. For all we know, our approach might be a recipe for failure! Yet it's important to document every step so we can all learn about what works and what doesn't.

We first marked two circles on the ground with
an entry space between them, then dig a shallow
trench following the outer circle (click on any of
these photos to enlarge).

Step 1: We spray painted a small circle onto the ground using a 2' piece of string loosely looped around a central stake, then painted a large circle using a 5' piece of string. The  entryway marked between the circles is much wider than usual to allow easier access for those Valhallans who may have mobility issues or other physical challenges. Then we dug a narrow trench along the outer circle two or three inches deep.

We placed the first row of bricks at a 45 degree
angle so they're resting on each other. We packed
dirt on both sides for stability while angling each
brick inward towards the center.

Step 2: We lined the outer circle trench with bricks stuck into the dirt at a 45 degree angle and later found that the bricks should angle inward slightly. Packing dirt on both sides of each brick was necessary to stabilize them. We were surprised at how fast this first row went in - it was very easy. Valhalla just happened to have piles of bricks laying everywhere, they sure are coming in handy now.

We built a round cage in the center using
4' tall woven wire, a few pieces of old pipe,
and wire ties.

Step 3: We pounded three old pieces of pipe into the ground and wrapped 4' high round wire-mesh cage around them, forming a round cage and  securing the wire to the stakes with wire ties. This is where leaves, grass, kitchen scraps and other compost material will go in. Notice that our keyhole garden is shaped more like Pac-Man due to the wider entryway, but that shouldn't hurt anything.

We lined the bottom of the bed with
paper and cardboard

Step 4: We lined the bottom of the bed with paper and cardboard to keep weeds from growing up next spring, and also made a temporary barrier inside the cage to help keep dirt out during construction. The paper and cardboard inside the main bed will add some carbon to the compost as it rots and also serve as substrate for the little tiny microscopic microbes that help to nourish the soil inside the bed.

Gordon used the tractor that Ed Harkreader loaned
to Valhalla to fetch several bucket-loads of topsoil
from the waiting mini-mountains of dirt. Thank you
so much Ed, we're taking very good care of it!

Step 5: It was then time for the first layer of topsoil. We had two big truckloads of it delivered several months ago. Then Valhalla volunteer  Ed Harkreader loaned us his tractor with a bucket on it for two weeks. We'll never be able to thank him enough; hauling individual buckets across the yard would have been a  nightmare, while this was easy!

Contemplating the possibility of using mortar to
lock in the second row of bricks. Nah. If women in
Africa do not need any then we shouldn't need to
use any mortar either. If we've made a bad decision
we'll add it to the Lesson's Learned pile and go back
to fix any mistakes, or even start over if necessary.

Step 6: After carefully dumping the topsoil in we spread it around with  rakes into an even layer over the paper and cardboard. However, when stacking the second row of bricks it became clear that a lot more dirt was needed to help support the bricks. Yes, we thought about mortaring the bricks into place... but the women in Africa used bricks without mortar, so we didn't want to cheat. If they can do it, we should be able to do it too...

The second row of bricks clearly tilt in towards
the compost basket in the center.

Step 7: With additional topsoil for support the second row of bricks went in fast. We angled them inward quite a bit... they lock in to each other, but not as much as we'd hoped. On the bright side, Gordon accidentally dropped some of a tractor bucket-load of dirt on part of this second row of bricks and the growing outer wall still stayed in place. Works so far!

Paper, cardboard, and sun-bleached deer bones
went into the very bottom of the compost cage.

Step 8: At this point it was time to start filling the bottom of the compost cage to prevent too much topsoil from falling in. We started with paper, cardboard, and a couple of old sun-bleached deer bones that coyotes had apparently dragged into the yard at some point. The bones should add calcium just like eggshells in traditional compost piles do.

Nutrients from the compost cage will eventually travel through the cage to nourish the soil in the main gardening bed. Think for a moment about this important point: compost piles are normally placed in or near a garden, yet then one has to take the time and energy to physically move the composted soil over to the actual growing beds. The keyhole garden approach is based on composting organic materials right inside of their ultimate destination, thus eliminating a very time consuming and labor intensive step in traditional gardening approaches.

Chopping leaves with Valhalla's second-hand but
very functional lawn mower, and taking some of
the Guinea fowl's precious partially composted
bedding. Incidentally, the Guinea Fowl Palace
doesn't smell at all since we layer in fresh leaves
every few days. Nonetheless, the old leaves down
below are rotting - composting - and generate the
heat that the birds need to stay warm on icy nights.

Chopped up leaves went in next - and here's a neat trick: if you have a lawn mower then simply run it over any leaf piles that you might have, or just straight over leaves that haven't been raked up yet. When the lawn mower bag fills up, the leaves inside will range from dust to tiny shreds to half-chopped leaves - just perfect for compost! After spending countless hours raking up leaves I sure wish we'd figured that out before. Well, live and learn.

Then we raided the Guinea Fowl Palace that Specialist Jen Manning built for some of their precious bedding, which is a combination of straw, leaves, and (naturally) bird droppings. We didn't want to take too much since that's how the Guineas stay warm during cold winter nights: the bottom layers are many months old and already rotting - that is, composting - which generates heat. When it's really cold they drop down from their roosts and burrow down into the thick carpet of leaves to stay warm. The Guineas watched with a great deal of interest as we took a few cubic feet of their composted bedding away, yet they still have yards of the stuff left in there.

We used ash from the fireplace to ensure
purity, then poured hand-carried jugs of
well water over the first layers of
organic materials inside the keyhole
garden bed's composting cage.

Step 9: Other essential additions to the keyhole compost cage included wood ash straight out of the fireplace to ensure purity. It always seems that no matter how careful one tries to be, little bits of plastic and other non-biodegradable materials will inevitably land in a household burn barrel and should therefore be avoided like the plague when composting.

Then we added some large jugs of water. This is sort of a sore point here at Valhalla for the moment, since there's not a single water facet on the front side of the house to run hoses from. This will be resolved in the coming months after an appropriate rain water collection system can be designed and built to capture water running off the roof. A large cistern will have to be purchased and buried up the hill just outside the house, then hoses and gravity will be used to deliver water to the garden and all the vegetable beds by spring.

We added more topsoil than we thought we'd need,
but it turned out to be the perfect amount.

Step 10: We added a lot more topsoil into the bed in preparation for adding the third row of bricks. The compost already added into the center cage kept dirt out very efficiently, and the piles of dirt outside the cage shielded the chopped leaves and other materials from blowing away in the wind (it's been extremely windy here in the last several days).

Preparing biochar in one of the other raised garden
beds by partially burning and then smoldering piles
of sticks collected off the ground under trees.
With help from microbes and the earth worms that
will be added later, this charcoal will rot and
slowly release carbon and nutrients into the soil.

Step 11: We'd previously prepared some charcoal in one of our other raised garden beds by lighting piles of small sticks on fire, letting them burn halfway through, and then covering them up with dirt so they could smolder for a few hours before burning out. The resulting charcoal is actually the biochar we'd previously blogged about. We took some of it and spread it all around the keyhole garden bed outside the cage along with several bags of store-bought compost (by next year Valhalla will be generating enough compost from scratch so it won't be necessary to buy it again).

Valhalla's first completed keyhole garden, all ready
for worms, more compost, and finally planting
during this coming spring. 

Step 12: We completed the third row of bricks and added more composting materials -  we're done! Next week we'll go pick up a bucket of earth worms from Ike Yates worm farm in Gassville and then wait to see how heavy rains will effect our first keyhole garden attempt. If the walls hold up as they should, we'll build a second keyhole garden similar to this one.

An amusing sidebar to this story: our favorite UPS delivery man arrived to deliver a package but suddenly caught sight of Valhalla's unusual new addition in the garden. "What the heck is that?" he asked while pointing. "It's a keyhole garden from Africa!" I answered, and then explained how it works. He stared at it some more while rubbing his chin. "Well," he finally said, "Have you ever heard that people are starving in Africa?" Funny!

"You've gotta be joking.."

Cats Vixen and Joker as they listened in on our discussion about Valhalla's Master Gardening Plan. Vixen is clearly skeptical and Joker doesn't know what to think of it all. They don't like vegetables anyway so their opinions don't count. 

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