Keyhole Gardens at Ahwatukee Community Garden
Ahwatukee Community Garden News: One of our Master Gardeners, Linda Rominger, noticed keyhole gardens at a website online. She ordered a video about how to build and use keyhole gardens. In the spring of 2014, Brett Bell decided to build 3 keyhole gardens for us as his Eagle Scout project. He sent an email announcing a car wash to our community garden email list and his family's own extensive list of friends. He held a car wash with his troop and raised $1,000!
Brett and his father, building contractor Jim Bell, found these black and orange bricks on sale at a Home Depot store. They cost 98 cents each. Brett assembled his crew and they built the 3 gardens in one weekend. They also bought and installed chicken wire along the bottom of the fence and extending one foot deep to keep bunnies and other critters out. Bunnies have dug under fences in our children's garden and eaten a lot of vegetables so we wanted to prevent that from happening in our keyhole garden section. Brett had $172 left over and presented the Ahwatukee Community Garden with a check. Good going, Brett!
Bob Korhely, our second Master Gardener, cut 4 pieces of rebar and placed them 9" away from the stake marking the middle of each keyhole. Then he wrapped chicken wire around the poles and twisted a wire on each pole to secure it. He also put the irrigation tube in each keyhole.
Garden volunteers gathered in July to fill the first keyhole. We planned on the carbon to nitrogen ratio being 4:1 in our fill materials. So we needed a lot of cardboard, newspaper, dried leaves, and even toilet paper roll cores to make up our brown carbon fill. We removed the packing tape from the boxes, flattened them, and soaked them in water in a children's play pool. Our nitrogen (green fill) was made up of discarded vegetables from Lee Lee's Market, lawn clippings from Paramount Landscaping, dried goat and chicken manure, and garden clippings. We made about 30 layers of these materials in order to fill it to the top. (Our first layer was wet boxes with their flaps hanging over the edges of the garden. When we filled it to the top, we bent the flaps inside on top of the layers).
The process took longer than we expected--three hours! I walked on top of the materials to press them down. We sprayed each layer with the hose so it would be moist. Then we still had to add manure, compost, and fill dirt to heap up for the last 12" or so of the garden--the volcano-shaped planting section (higher in the middle than on the edges).
We planted seedlings from Vilardi Farms. Around the center wire basket for composting we planted Jamaican Hibiscus. Around the outside edges of the keyhole we planted Green Malabar Spinach. In the middle areas we planted two types of tomato plants: Taxi and Punta Banda (the only tomatoes adapted for summer/fall planting here in Phoenix), and several kinds of basils, peppers, and sage. The final four photos below show the plants 2 days after the planting date. With the help of shade cloth, they are adapting to the 112 degree heat. See photos below. Click on each photo to enlarge it.
The keyhole garden is filled with healthy plants which continue to thrive at the Ahwatukee Community Garden, located on the NW corner of Elliot and 48th St., in Ahwatukee, a designated village in Phoenix, AZ. Thanks for visiting our page! ~ Kelly Athena for the Ahwatukee Community Garden
This is how we filled our first keyhole garden in July of 2014:
We filled our second two keyhole gardens at the Ahwatukee Community Garden on Sept. 28, 2014. Here is how we did it:
September 28, 2014 Keyhole Garden Filling:
Four inches of rain yesterday gave us some nice soft dirt and wet cardboard boxes to line the keyholes with. We alternated layers of cardboard, newspaper, green branches, hay, coffee, manure, and compost on top--Used about 60 boxes per keyhole. We'd get up on top and stomp around to tamp the materials down every few layers.
We even added some junk mail (bills), old towels, shirts, and underwear, a Victoria Secret catalog, and toilet paper tubes into the mix. We took a break and ate cold popsicles, homemade goodies, cold water, and munched a few spinach leaves from Keyhole #1 we planted in July. A lot of sweat, team work, and victory as Team Bill finished first, and then helped Team Kelly finish her garden. We planted seedlings of lettuce, cilantro, parsley, calendula flowers, cabbage, and cauliflower.
PHOTOS of the Second Keyhole Filling at Ahwatukee Community Garden Here
September 28, 2014 Keyhole Garden Filling:
Four inches of rain yesterday gave us some nice soft dirt and wet cardboard boxes to line the keyholes with. We alternated layers of cardboard, newspaper, green branches, hay, coffee, manure, and compost on top--Used about 60 boxes per keyhole. We'd get up on top and stomp around to tamp the materials down every few layers.
We even added some junk mail (bills), old towels, shirts, and underwear, a Victoria Secret catalog, and toilet paper tubes into the mix. We took a break and ate cold popsicles, homemade goodies, cold water, and munched a few spinach leaves from Keyhole #1 we planted in July. A lot of sweat, team work, and victory as Team Bill finished first, and then helped Team Kelly finish her garden. We planted seedlings of lettuce, cilantro, parsley, calendula flowers, cabbage, and cauliflower.
PHOTOS of the Second Keyhole Filling at Ahwatukee Community Garden Here
Article and Photos of the keyhole gardens by Kelly Athena for Ahwatukee Community Garden