The Tensile Ring part is that it is help up by a mesh or fence in a round shape. Almost nothing else is needed. This round raised bed should be small enough to reach the center from the edge.
Keyhole gardens are neat raised bed gardens with the following features:
- Layers of mulch and fertilizer under the soil to act as sponges for moisture and provide nutrients as they compost
- A compost basket right in the center - because of the spongy layers of mulch you can water the whole bed right from the center and the moisture easily wicks out. Then, as the compost breaks down the nutrients leach into the bed with the water.
Here is my tensile ring. I started with 6 stakes. I sat in the center of where I wanted it and placed the first two stakes at my arm's reach on both sides. Then rotated and did the next two, etc. Then I took 21 feet of 2 foot wide chicken wire, folded it in half to make it only one foot wide.
Then I just ran it around the stakes and bent the wires together where they overlapped.
Improvement: Use a square mesh fencing that won't stretch as easy.
To keep the dirt in, I stacked up flakes from rotten hay bales around the perimeter. I might also use straw, or landscaping fabric. Making a product out of 12" pieces of cedar screwed to 2 strips of galvanized steel may worth a try, too. Or silt fence material and stakes. But rotten hay is what I have lying around my yard at the moment, so that's what I experimented with.
Then I put the mulch/moisture sponge layer down. More rotten hay - about4 bales, then some highly rotten logs and the black soil from under them, and some leaves from our leaf pile and some leaves from the driveway. Over time these will break down and settle, but then we'll just have to add some more on top, I guess. I would have loved to get some manure for this job, too, but it wouldn't fit in the budget this time.
Then i started adding the black dirt (we happen to have a few yards of that in a pile from a the last raised beds we did). After adding a bit, I decided to fill in with another bale, too.
After many wheelbarrow loads, it started to look heaped like this. Note to self: next time place these beds where I can get at them with a bobcat. You can see the previous generation of raised bed gardens in this picture, too. I can say that the round one was much less expensive than the cedar ones.
In the following picture you can see where the compost will be dumped in the center. I don't know if it will be quite large enough, but there wil probably be a couple more of these along with some chickens and bunnies to split the compost amongst.
I needed something to make a basket for the compost so it didn't just sit in a dirt recess. The whole weaving a basket from grape vines didn't work out in time, so I went with an old standby - firewood. Below is the firewood lined compost pit.
And now, the same thing complete with compost.
A thing of beauty to behold, it quickly attracts admirers. Rowdy hooligans.
This is to show the prifile of the side. The chicken wire is too easy to stretch, so we're getting some bulging except for where the straight wire runs through it. I will probably end up ringing the whole thing with square mesh soon, and maybe landscaping fabric, too, to give it a nicer look. If I was wealthy with rocks, I would build a dry stacked rock wall around it. At only 12" high, that could be quick and easy.
Components:
- 21 ft of 24" wide chicken wire - approx $5 worth
- 6 stakes - scraps from garage
- 5 rotten hay bales - siting around the yard
- leaf compost, rotten logs - perimeter of yard
- 1 to 2 yards black dirt, sitting in a pile from a few years ago
- 8 pieces of firewood - sitting around
Total time: 3 hours
Seems easy and enjoyable. I'll keep you posted on how it is to use.
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