Are keyhole gardens really permanent?

I'm skeptical. It's the whole "basket in the middle" thing. That stuff decomposes. How is this a permanent system? I do some keyhole-shaped beds, but i just put a standard "pile" in the middle.

In fact, I do lots of keyhole gardens,  arranged along paths in a branching pattern. But really,  the shape and layout could easily change from year to year. What's permanent about this?

I never heard that keyhole gardens are permanent.

To me, the benefits of a keyhole garden is that they are ergonomic so that a keyhole garden requires less bending over.

Keyhole gardens are also sustainable because they recycle kitchen scraps and reduce  the need for commercial fertilizers and pesticides.

As things decompose the keyhole gardens tend to require some maintenance by consistently adding kitchen scraps, etc

Ok, I thought permanence was one of the main selling points.

So a household can really only maintain one or two of these.

You're not limited to food scraps, right? You can use leaves and weeds and all the normal stuff.

Does it need to be a stick-woven basket? It seems to me that the same effect woud be had by making a tower of loosely stacked rocks. As long as the roots can reach the goodness decomposing in the middle I think it will have a beneficial effect and will last longer.

I'm not sure everything has to be permanent. I know permaculture stands for 'permanent agriculture' amongst oter things, but nature is a moving target: rivers flood, ponds fill in...There is always some interevention if we call it gardening or farming (rather than just foraging).

Ah yes,  "creatively use and respond to change. "

Keyhole seems to be the closest thing to gardening a compost pile. It's an intensive nucleus,  a lasagna bed, a worm farm, and I'm sure many other things. I'm exploring the possibility of using it to apply syntropic ag in a large space-- just one spot at a time. In this case it would not, of course, be permanent, but would give way to dominantly tree system.

You could always modify it by removing the basket and doing 'Ruth Stout' type composting instead, tucking vegetable scraps under the mulch in other parts of the growing bed.

I had mine going for neigh 5 years.

The organic matter in the middle decomposed and got smaller.  Worms also moved some of it between the bed and the basket.  It was about 1/8th solid organic matter and my estimate was, depending on lots of factors, I would need to dig out the center every 10 to 25 years.   I usually move or refresh a garden every 4 to 8 years as my esthetics and use of an area changes.

r ranson wrote:I had mine going for neigh 5 years.

The organic matter in the middle decomposed and got smaller.  Worms also moved some of it between the bed and the basket.  It was about 1/8th solid organic matter and my estimate was, depending on lots of factors, I would need to dig out the center every 10 to 25 years.   I usually move or refresh a garden every 4 to 8 years as my esthetics and use of an area changes.

Very helpful information. Your basket lasted 5 years? I guess I just have too many termites around here.

The basket above ground did.  Or i would have better if my uprights weren't rotten before I built the garden.  I had to make repairs and add more uprights a year or two on, if memory servers.

Below the soil level, it didn't need to last.  It was there until the soil from the garden firmed up (settled and plant roots).  

Nothing has to be permanent.

There's one benefit of keyhole gardens in a community plot setting. It allows more growing space by reducing the amount of aisles needed, as opposed to a grid system.

I've never built a keyhole garden persat, but isn't the composting part just a large version of in garden composting?
I think you could use almost any material for the "basket" and it would still work.
A ring of wire fencing would last indefinitely .
An enclosure made of concrete block would last "forever"

I build beds from pallets, 2 feet tall is the norm.
They are not expected to last forever and yet, they do last a long long time.
I end up harvesting them for soil to start new beds long before they fall apart.
Even when I remove the pallets, the contents retain the form because it's filled with roots and mycelium.
I think you can expect the same from any raised bed that has living soil.

If I were to build a keyhole garden, I would use living elderberry stakes woven together with dead grapevines, fill it with autumn leaves and animal poop, and top it with finished compost.

Living elderberry is fairly strong, dead branches are pretty weak.
Dead grape vines take forever to break down.
The elderberry would be there for dappled shade, but also green manure.
Elderberry leaves strip off their branches pretty easily, making the ideal for green manure
They will have to be aggressively pruned, but they will last indefinitely.
Prunings, can be used as stakes  to support annuals for a year, then if they grow roots, transplanted out.
Everything I've learned so far indicates elderberries are shallow rooted, but great at holding soil.
Worst case scenario, you create a elderberry thicket, but they do seem easy to manage.



The central compost receptacle would have a  half barrel reservoir at the bottom, filled in with  sawdust,with rope wicks dangling into the surrounding growing medium.
I would spike that central area with worms and finished compost.
Alternatively, use a full barrel, grow azolla or duck weed, and use them as green manure.
The center pathway and the perimeter can be planted with comfrey for more green manure.

Tyler Grace wrote:Nothing has to be permanent.

There's one benefit of keyhole gardens in a community plot setting. It allows more growing space by reducing the amount of aisles needed, as opposed to a grid system.

That's another selling point. Is it true though? To garden a keyhole you still have to walk all around it. That's pathway, right?

Nathanael Szobody wrote:To garden a keyhole you still have to walk all around it. That's pathway, right?

You can reverse them every other plot, so they fit in to eachother like a puzzle.

I had never heard about these and am surprised.
here is a great link to moe details and explanations.
keyhole gardens in Africa

John C Daley wrote:I had never hears about these and am surprised.
here is a great link to moe details and explanations.
keyhole gardens in Africa

That's a lovely diagram. Like I said, it's like gardening a compost pile. A great bit of engineering. Only in my area of Africa i would not recommend the masonry wall: too much thermal mass. It would keep heating the soil all night long. In fact I hardly raise my keyhole bed at all. I realize that loses the benefit of an elevated work space,  but a raised bed increases sun exposure and thus heated surface. I just do a wood core mounded bed and pretty much go Ruth Stout method from there.

Nathanael, do you have more than one family add material to the centre bit?

Tyler Grace wrote:

Nathanael Szobody wrote:To garden a keyhole you still have to walk all around it. That's pathway, right?

You can reverse them every other plot, so they fit in to eachother like a puzzle.

That's exactly what I do! Great minds...

My experience is that I need to access the back side of the keyhole. That means a path would, in fact,  be useful. If I reduce that path to 6 inches wide and make it wind around those interlocking keyhole,  that's just a preference,  it still needs pathway. And the winding nature of it is even less efficient. What an i missing?

John C Daley wrote:Nathanael, do you have more than one family add material to the centre bit?

No I don't. And, in fact, i give all food scraps to the chickens. If chickens can't eat it i give it to the soldier flies.  But i have plenty of manure to make up piles.

I just want to add some related threads for anyone wanting to see more about keyholes:
- https://permies.com/t/12429/Interesting-keyhole-hugelkultur-design
- https://permies.com/t/68883/permaculture/keyhole-garden-summer-drought
- https://permies.com/t/360024/Permaculture-patterns-Lobes

Nathanael Szobody wrote:I'm skeptical. It's the whole "basket in the middle" thing. That stuff decomposes. How is this a permanent system? I do some keyhole-shaped beds, but i just put a standard "pile" in the middle.

What do you mean by a "standard pile"? Do you mean like Hugelkulture wood?

By "permanent" do you mean the permanent in "permaculture"? To quote an author my children loved, "Nothing man makes lasts forever, nothing the gods make, lasts eternity." (at least close to that - it was years ago)

To me the concept of permaculture is that far into the future, what we do on our land, will continue to thrive in a moderately self-sustaining way. Far into the future, unless future abuse to my land happens, the fertility we have built in areas, will continue to support plant growth. Tillage and growing annual food crops, without having ways to return fertility to that soil, will degrade the soil and often allows the top soil to blow or wash away.

There are many different versions of "keyhole" gardens, and as many different ecosystem. I tried building two high ones on my land. The soil fertility around the bed has improved considerably, but the beds were unproductive for several reasons in my ecosystem.
1. The first bed was too shaded, the wire basket was too wimpy and collapsed, I would need to be able to add grey water as well as compost to provide enough water for the plants I tried to grow, and I would have had to find a way to protect it from deer.
2. The second bed was a magnet for rats who repeatedly damaged the roots of the plants. It is currently planted with garlic. The crop will likely not be as large as crops planted elsewhere, but it it be yummy and sufficient for my needs.

If your concern is the amount of space foot paths take when designing any garden area, that's a very valid concern. It's a balance between being able to look after and harvest the plants, vs the reduced growing area due to those paths. A friend of mine swore by straight beds with a narrow path where essentially they took the dirt from the path, piled it on the bed and that made about a 6" height of bed compared to the path. Because this system didn't use any sorting of "containment wall", the bed edges slumped into the path and this might be quite fine for young, healthy gardeners, but as a senior, I found trying to walk in such a narrow space very hard on my gimpy knee, and overall unpleasant and borderline dangerous. I know from readings on this site, that effort has been made on the large Hügelkultur beds at Wheaten Labs to make safe foot paths so that they can access to harvest and manage the beds.

How to balance ideas and principles with the real-life situation of one's ecosystem, takes time and experimentation. Even if an experiment doesn't work out in the long term, if the quality of the soil improves, rather than deteriorates, I would consider that a win.

Jay Angler wrote:
By "permanent" do you mean the permanent in "permaculture"? To quote an author my children loved, "Nothing man makes lasts forever, nothing the gods make, lasts eternity." (at least close to that - it was years ago)

I just mean something that doesn't have to be remade every year.

Jay Angler wrote:1. The first bed was too shaded, the wire basket was too wimpy and collapsed, I would need to be able to add grey water as well as compost to provide enough water for the plants I tried to grow, and I would have had to find a way to protect it from deer.
2. The second bed was a magnet for rats who repeatedly damaged the roots of the plants. It is currently planted with garlic. The crop will likely not be as large as crops planted elsewhere, but it it be yummy and sufficient for my needs.

You raise some good points. On the first one I thoroughly agree. Whether it's hugel, wood core,  or thick lasagna style,  in a very hot climate all that carbon is extracting moisture from the soul more than anything else. If your garden depends on irrigation then you'd better have enough water to maintain that huge sponge. And that's not efficient.

On the other hand,  all that woody material laid down on the surface as mulch has the opposite effect: it protects the soil from the sun and enables it to retain moisture. The biology underneath works on it only on the moist underside surface,  creating topsoil. Ruth Stout wins again. In my climate I don't bury wood anymore.

To your second point,  that's another reason I don't bury wood anymore: the mice love it.

Nature puts wood on the surface so that's good enough for me.

Nathanael Szobody wrote: Nature puts wood on the surface so that's good enough for me.

Ecosystem is everything. In mine, dead trees leave a network of underground woody roots that the replacement trees, along with helpful mycorrhiza, mine for valuable nutrients and water that's soaked into them, so some underground wood is a good thing. Surface woody mulch can make it harder for some plants to benefit from the dew which makes up a big part of our water at certain times of the year.

You mentioned that in your ecosystem, rocks were a liability, as they held heat you don't want. In my ecosystem, I often will use dark, flat rocks to help hold the Sun's warmth against our cool, onshore, evening breezes.

This is why permaculture is all about observation! We have to consider the underlying principles, such as soil building, but then figure out how to do that in our specific circumstances. It's why we want to have so many tools in our tool-box, so we can try out different ones and see how they work! Your thoughtful reply, tells me you're doing that! Great job!

Probably the easiest thing to do is to make a temporary one and observe what works for your lifestyle and climate.  That's what we did and I learned a lot about gardens I never expected.  And a lot about my situation that makes the "right way" of doing this kind of bed not work.  But it works for others.  There is no universal truth in gardening.  

If it works, take what you've learned and build a new one.  If it doesn't work, take what you learn and build something better.  

That's probably why most of our garden beds are 5 to 10 years before being dismantled and redesigned.  We're always learning and as humans age, the environment needs to adjust to our bodies if we want to keep doing the same thing.  

I'll probably make another wattle keyhole bed in a few years.  This time, make the uprights out of stronger stuff instead of half rotten sticks.  I liked the height of the garden and I especially liked the quality of the soil when it was a few years old.  I have an idea of making smaller ones and growing veg and such, until the basket is full.  Then planting a fruit tree in the middle.  When the fruit tree is too big, build the next garden, letting the old garden self seed veg and eventually a food forest happens.