About keyhole garden

In our high mountain desert when winter and summer have very little moisture and soil I've got on a pasture is lacking organic material (was overgrazed and became dry lot in the past) water conservation is very important.

Key hole garden building stage 1

Here is where I've got the idea.

It's called keyhole garden. Cold compost bed with compost pile in the middle
Hm... that got me started. If I make central basket bigger I can out my worms in there and itschiken safe :)

So I'e got busy asking for sticks (I have no trees that can produce anything of that sort yet. One man's trash is another's treasure, right :), it's tree trimming season now or just before and no large trash collecting days in the area (and cities now want home owners to pay 65$+ for that)
So, I made some calls, posted couple messages and got my materials. Logs were dropped by local tree service all nice and health and some are very good length and height.
And I also had dirt piles I needed to do something about... at least cover.
So here is my start, pull the temp cover out and make a general shape

 Like so... make a hole

 Start setting sticks

 and I've got a lot dropped of, good enough for more than one garden... beans trellises are in order :) the rest will be bottom of my hugel-BTE-cold compost bed

 And I've got grass and leaves.

 And truck load of logs

 So I put logs around, not all the way, but there will be more logs...

 Some of the logs were better for the start of a spiral bed... another dirt pile transformation :)

 Here is the start when I put most of the logs and made the flatter prep surface

And here is mostly completed keyhole, back side needs more logs, but one can see the layers here

dirt, and wood chips and whatever chicken poop and... used chicken bedding collected from my chicken coop,

then leaves


then grass.

 then a bit of compost, I don not have whole lot so I'm using that sparingly on this bed, when I bring more I put more of that and layer of wood chips on top

 and a bit of wood chips on top.
 and water well. keyhole garden and spiral garden are in front of the orchard, southern part of it.

More materials for the to be spiral. will be done in the same way.

Spiral garden started

I have plenty of very non demanding ground cover like plants that will produce, protect from rabbits and loosen the soils there.

Walking onins do well on the 'perimeter' so rabbits have not that much interest

Nettle,,, will think where to put it later... for now in the garden because the plent needed to adapt to my soil...

 These onions will remain in the garden, but maybe not,... will decide later do I move them to spiral garden or not.

 Ans these I'm hoping to naturalize there. For now in the garden. I'll need a tree in the center of the spiral and some bushes... I did not decide, but for the ground cover in spring I do like these...

Lavage will go there with time. also horse radish. somewhere near the exterior wall of the garden, where taller stumps are

And I do like some daffidiles, for now I enjoy them in the garden, maybe I'll leave them there

Meanwhile in the garden overwintereed char got a very good start. I think I like that method a lot.

 Here we are.