Keyhole To The Future
What looks like a guillotine is actually a wooden jig designed to bend metal into a curve. The bending device is one of several located at the new keyhole garden manufacturing plant in Acton, a small community next door to Granbury, Texas. Keyhole gardens are a fairly new concept that received a major promotion when school children in Lesotho, Africa built one to sustain their lives in an area that did not eagerly accept gardening.
GRANBURY, Texas — What looks like a guillotine is actually a wooden jig designed to bend metal into a curve. The bending device is one of several located at the new keyhole garden manufacturing plant in Acton, a small community next door to Granbury.
Keyhole gardens are a fairly new concept that received a major promotion when school children in Lesotho, Africa built one to sustain their lives in an area that did not eagerly accept gardening. A video about the creation of the African garden appears at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjcjCCx3BWY>.
W. Leon Smith, publisher of the Iconoclast, and his brother, Lyndell Smith, decided in December 2009 to experiment with designs of keyhole gardens in an attempt to find an easy and economical way to build them, the idea being to promote such gardens throughout the United States and perhaps foster their trek into other countries that might benefit from them.
Leon Smith had just sold one of his publications, The Clifton Record, which provided him time to look into keyhole gardens, while Lyndell Smith, who has considerable experience in building houses and is an ace at design, thought the idea had merit for pursuit.
Early in 2009, Leon had successfully built a traditional keyhole garden in the backyard of a storage house he owned that was next door to his home in Clifton, Texas.
“I was very impressed with the outcome of the keyhole garden,” he said. “We raised an abundance of black-eyed peas (cowpeas), zucchini, squash, okra, beans, and other crops in a confined area that made efficient use of water and did not involve backbreaking work, other than building the garden itself.
“The fresh vegetables we plucked were excellent eating and, besides that, it was good to get back to nature and farming.
“It took me a couple of weeks to build the garden and was quite an undertaking for someone on a really tight schedule,” he added. “This spring I wanted an additional garden but was put off by the time it takes to build one, so when The Record sold, I began to envision coming up with an easy way to build an additional garden or two.”
The result was a series of experiments that assumed a life of their own.
“We decided to share these experiments with the public, which resulted in the creation of a website, <www.keyholefarm.com>, and our offering a kit so that interested people might be able to assemble such a garden in a short period of time. Right now, our current model takes about an hour to build from the kit. It includes assembling a metal frame and attaching panels.”
Traditional keyhole gardens are about three feet high, six feet in diameter (circle), and have an opening for the gardener to enter to work the garden. A wire basket four feet tall stands in the middle of the garden which is where food products are recycled in order to nourish the garden, cutting down on water use. The shape of the garden is reminiscent of a keyole, thus the name.
“Our first keyhole garden design we named Alicia, after one of my grandmothers who was a gardener. It was the traditional size,” said Leon Smith. “Since then, however, we have built two that are shorter in height, which results in having to dump in less compost and topsoil. Personally, I like these better. Too, we have worked on improving some of the components, like tees that connect the metal sections, and have made them stronger, although the ones in the first garden are still holding up well.”
“We decided to give the gardens names,” said Smith. “My original keyhole garden constructed of cinder blocks and rocks we named Bubba and the third garden is named Belle. I am undecided on a name for the fourth garden but am leaning toward ‘Key-Rex,’ since it will be gray in color and resemble a dinosaur — sort of.”
Smith said that every family “ought to have a vegetable garden, and a keyhole garden is a great place to start. Raising a few of your own crops is a great way to get back to nature, to teach youngsters to raise food, and to cut your food bill a little. Not only that, but when that first sprout comes up there is an undeniable feeling of satisfaction that arises from knowing you have a ‘green thumb’ and that you are participating in the recycling of life.”
He noted that a primary reason he and his brother decided to offer kits with which to build gardens quickly was due to feedback from people aware of the experimental venture. “Nearly everyone we have told about our gardens wants one,” he said, “so we decided to gear up to be able to build them in order to share the experience. Ideally, we will be able to offer them to people in third-world countries where starvation is an ongoing problem, which might involve someone with money buying several and shipping them out.
“We are continuing our experiments,” he added. “Part of the idea is to emphasize recycling and part of it is to make efficient use of water and materials. We don’t know how long the panels on the side will last and how they will sustain plants long-term. We have not been at it long enough for a track record. But, so far, so good. We have begun to raise some crops and they appear to be doing well at this stage. We will be posting updates frequently on our website in the event readers want to follow our progress.”
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