AUTUMN2008
Keyhole Gardens
http://www.afrigadget.com/2008/07/05/keyhole-gardens/#comment-13742
Our reader Zeno dropped in an e-mail, asking if we knew
more about keyhole gardens.
Keyhole gardens?
Actually, I had heard about those Folkewall installations
in Gabarone, Botswana the other day that are used for
greywater recycling, but keyhole gardens were indeed
quite new to me. Guess this also shows how many smart
solutions still exist out there that will need to be
rediscovered and put in use.
Keyhole gardens are a technique used to grow vegetables
in a dry climate. They are actually a special form of
raised bed gardens: circular waist high raised beds with
a path to the center. Walled in by stones, there's a
basket made from sticks and straw in the center that
holds manure and other organic kitchen waste for compost.
Since they look like a keyhole from above, they are often
called keyhole gardens and also promoted under this name
in Lesotho, where the charity organisation "Send a
Cow" has been promoting the creation of these
special gardens for some time now.
So what makes these gardens so special?
* the surrounding stones retain the
rich soils and keep it safe from erosion
* the round shape retains moisture
* compact size, even small plots can
be used for gardening
* raised beds enable the sick and
elderly to help with the gardening work
* center in the middle is used for
composting and reuse of greywater (= reuse of nutrients)
"Send a Cow" also created a very informative
website on their activies and published some valuable How-to-manuals
for us to adopt this smart approach. Now I am only
curious to know if we could also mix the greywater with
some collected urine and use that as additional
fertilizer. In any case, keyhole gardens are a very
appropriate "technology" which certainly isn't
limited to countries with a dry climate.
Sustainable Farming
Initiative
Helping vulnerable families build sustainable livelihoods
by developing agricultural techniques, such as keyhole
gardens which enables them to grow food even during
periods of drought.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) and the United Nations World Food
Programme (WFP) report, issued on 12 June 2007, an
estimated 410,000 people of the country's 1.9 million
inhabitants will struggle to meet their basic food needs
due to extensive crop failure after experiencing one of
the most severe droughts in the last 30 years.
Environmental damage caused by over farming and soil
erosion compounds the problems associated with drought.
World Vision and partners has introduced an innovative
pilot project called keyhole gardens, to explore ways of
improving the health and livelihoods of people through
suitable sustainable farming and water harvesting
techniques.
The techniques taught are specifically designed to
increase the fertility and water-holding capacities of
soil. The introduction of manure, combined with knowledge
in how to compost and create double-dug beds and keyhole
gardens, for instance, has led to farmers experiencing up
to five-fold increases in crop yields.
Keyhole gardens are born
The building of keyhole garden started as a US funded
Food For Asset activity that uses food resources as an
incentive for communities to learn and put to use new and
appropriate agronomical practices.
"Keyhole gardens" are so called because, from
the top,
each one looks like a keyhole. The keyhole garden is a
cylindrical structure made of alternating layers of
suitable soil and kraal manure with some ash mixed with
the soil. These materials are supported by an outer layer
of stone and have at the center, a column of alternating
layers of manure and ash held within a porous basket. The
bottom of the structure contains pieces of aloe/sisal and
scrap metal collected from around the compound.The
gardens are raised to waist level and have a wedge
missing to make them easier for people to access. This
concept is to accommodate the aged and infirm, the raised
platform also reduces damage caused by domestic animals.
Vegetables usually planted are spinach, rape, onion,
beetroot, choumolia and carrots.
All gardens are built with locally available material, it
is relatively easy to construct and highly productive and
make's use of domestic waste water for watering and the
water conservative basket method.
The practicality of these gardens is its high
productivity, making it a suitable asset for
vegetable production to complement the food basket
distributed to vulnerable groups all year round. The
keyhole garden concept not
only provides local farmer with training in organic
farming methods in order for poor farmers to make use of
their
land and work their way out of poverty, but is easy to
construct and maintain.
The extreme environmental situation faced in Lesotho
meant adapting this model radically. Not only was the
mountainous landscape unsuitable for certain livestock,
it also became clear that to ensure year-long food
security there was a need to introduce water harvesting
techniques to complement the training providing in
organic farming methods.
http://www.sahims.net/archive/Briefcases/2007/reg_briefcase_078_lesotho.htmvv