Keyhole Garden Bed Experiments

Earlier this spring I posted a how-to for DIY keyhole garden beds: http://www.violetmoonorganics.com/2011/05/no-till-keyhole-garden-bed/ Since then, I have experimented with two new ways to create keyhole beds.  One was to build a round chicken tractor for containing our meat birds who scratched and fertilized the soil in the size and shape of a keyhole bed.  The other was to dump all the grass clippings from this summer in the shape of the bed.  Both of them have worked but each has their drawbacks.

My neighbor wanted to split an order of meat birds so I used the opportunity to experiment with another no-till garden option.  We built the tractor out of PVC pipe and attached chicken wire to it as securely as possible and positioned it exactly where I wanted my next keyhole bed.  We staked it into the ground with re-bar and covered the top and west side of the tractor with tarps to keep the chickens dry and out of the sun.  I continuously added straw bedding and over the course of about 9 weeks they had created a rich garden bed.  The chickens did a great job scratching up grass, weeds, and fertilizing the soil.  However, the bermuda grass survived.   Looks like I will have to pull that out by hand, but since the ground is no longer compacted, it will be relatively easy to pull up.  If your interested in getting rid of a lawn of bermuda grass, check out my post here:  Food Not Lawns.

After removing the chickens and the tractor, I edged in the entire bed to prevent any new weeds and bermuda grass from creeping in along the edges.  Next I’ll pull out the remaining bermuda grass roots and dig in my keyhole path.  If there is still too much bermuda, I’ll cover this bed with newspaper, manure and straw for planting in the spring. This will help smother the roots and make the soil even fluffier for pulling out whatever nasty roots might remain. Otherwise, a fresh layer of straw will work fine.

For the grass clippings experiment I laid out the bed as instructed in my original post, edged it in for the appropriate shape,  and then began spreading out grass clippings.  I just built the bed by dumping fresh clippings from each mowing so it took about 2 months worth of clippings for a good thick layer throughout the bed.  This worked better than I thought.  The clippings smothered all the grass and various weeds except for a very invasive woody vine called winter creeper.  I will have to remove the grass clippings and pull the vast netting of vine out by hand.  And, because grass clippings by themselves are not that nourishing to the soil, I’ll put a layer of manure down after I dig in the keyhole path.

Since both of these beds will be ready in the spring I have doubled my backyard garden space!  Plus, I only have two more keyhole beds to add for a completed mandala garden!