Keyhole Gardens: Growing Food in Arid Regions

Keyhole gardens are the stars of a new grass roots agrarian movement that allows gardeners to grow food successfully by creating a raised garden with the no-dig, layering concept of a lasagna garden and recycled materials instead of soil. The pictured garden has a center compost basket that distributes nutrients and water to the surrounding garden bed and is accessible by a keyhole notch opening in the circular design.

The raised bed is created by layering cardboard, paper, dead plants and other brown material on top of each other. All of this will break down over a 30 day or more period and become the "soil" for the garden.

All of these recycled materials (straw, cardboard, paper, cloth layered with green matter) will form the base and height of the raised bed and be fed through the center basket whose primary purpose is to distribute water and food (which is 90 to 95 percent water). That water, through capillary action, osmosis and gravity feed, travels out into the garden, accelerates micro-organism activity and "cooks" the layers of recycled matter.

Here is a keyhole garden in mid-construction with an outer wall constructed from recycled concrete and the beginning of a center basket for nutrient distribution. The surrounding interior will be filled with recycled, biodegradable material like cardboard, sawdust and phone books which, when combined with green matter, will serve as food for the micro-organisms, which in turn will produce nutrients for the plants.