It’s been about a month since our last update and so far this year, the Keyhole Farm keyhole gardens are doing very well. If you check back (bar at left) to the last post and the ones prior to it, you can get a pretty solid idea of where we’ve been this year and where we currently are.

I am still receiving compliments on a garden tour in which we participated on April 16, Dr. Deb’s Keyhole Garden Tour (A Garden Adventure in Bosque County, Texas) where approximately 225 garden enthusiasts primarily from different parts of  Texas toured numerous keyhole gardens near Clifton, including our seven, during a period of about five hours.

At the tour, Keyhole Farm showed both its traditional garden made of cinder blocks and rocks, plus six made from our kits. Our gardens were planted in waves this year to try to outsmart some freezes along the way. Some crops that I thought might have been stunted have actually begun to flourish during May.

So far this year, I have had to water very little, the internal basket providing most of the moisture and nourishment. Pest-wise, I have been battling an earlier-than-usual rise in squash bugs by removing tiny BB-shaped eggs from the underside of leaves and removing the bugs themselves and “squash”ing them.  I am not sure who is winning the battle, but I have also been sprinkling some diatomaceous earth in the areas where I have spotted squash bugs. Right now they appear to be somewhat under control.

Many, many varieties of butterflies have been floating about, along with bees (my friends) and wasps (not necessarily my friends).

Weatherwise, our highest high has been about 94 degrees. I have had a couple of problems with high winds, not tornadic, thank goodness, but pretty strong. A few of my sunflowers are no longer pointing straight up, but I have put a few stilts in to help, so I think they will be fine.

My peas are about ready to start harvesting and my beans are starting to make. We are still picking asparagus, spinach, swiss chard, and lettuce varieties, and other crops are beginning to show their heads, like broccoli, for instance.

Included on this update are some photos taken about three or four days ago showing the current stages of growth, which actually changes every day. I also included some close-ups of some of the plants.

Two photos show the current picture of an entire garden enlarged and below it two earlier stages (smaller), with one of them labeled according to date.

These earlier stages are also visible on the earlier posts.

With this update the photos might appear small on the page, but they can be clicked on to enlarge them, then clicked off the image to make it small again.

Our experiment station is located in Clifton and our manufacturing plant is in Granbury.

If anyone wants to tour our experiment station, just give me a call at 254-652-9483 or e-mail me at smith@keyholefarm.com and we can make arrangements.

It’s not too late to take the plunge at keyholing, so if anyone wants to order a kit, there is a menu bar above that will take you there.