This year’s fall gardens at the Keyhole Farm experiment station brought a few surprises. As mentioned in the previous post, deer problems (which have now apparently been solved) threw the autumn garden productions into a delay mode, i.e. replanting some of the crops about a month into the growing period since deer had nibbled down the tops of many plants overnight.

With the replanting, we went very heavily into black-eyed peas and a variety of beans, plus okra. The beans actually did much better than the ones we had planted in the spring. At the tail-end of summer and into early November they thrived and grew splendidly with some great pickings up until the Arctic freezes earlier this week.

Normally, when plants discontinue producing crops we pull them up and plant something else. However, this year we kept many of these in the ground, or at least a sampling of them.

The bell pepper plants started producing peppers anew as the fall season progressed. In fact, the peppers were bigger and of greater quantity than in the spring, which really surprised us. We also had a great run on several other peppers, including numerous  jalapenos.

We had left about a fourth of our tomato plants in the ground, and as the fall season progressed we discovered an excellent crop of tomatoes after a short dormant period. It took them a little longer to chameleon from green to red than they had in the spring, but the quantity and sizes were similar.  On the miniature plants, the tomatoes looked very much like bunches of grapes, very prolific and delicious.

People from throughout the United States are having great success with their Keyhole Farm keyholes, as is noted, for example,  in the supplied photo from Viktoria Vidali of a November Northern California garden. Also pictured on this page are some random shots taken in late October-early November of Keyhole Farm gardens and crops. Just click on the photo to enlarge it.

If you want to read previous posts and follow several seasons of Keyhole Farm gardening, just look to list on the right and click on an entry.

Although the vast majority of our customers are located in the United States (virtually every state), we have been receiving inquiries from afar, perhaps triggered by the exhibit of our keyholes in Paris, France during heritage days there in September (see post link, September 2014 update. If anyone is interested in partnering with us, please send an e-mail.

Since at the date of this posting we are about halfway through November, about four weeks remain to place orders for keyholes as holiday gifts to have them arrive prior to Dec. 25.

Keyhole garden kits are gifts that keep on giving all year long…and for years if you factor in their durability. The first kit we built and put into immediate action has survived for six years and is still in good shape, for example. It is the red-brick garden shown on this page.

Please note that Keyhole Farm kits come in two sizes – the regular six-foot diameter kit (with a wedge-cut out for easy access to the internal basket) and a mini-keyhole kitchen garden kit about 42-inches in diameter (without the wedge because the basket is easily accessible all around its perimeter).

Spring is on the horizon, so now is a good time to start thinking about the upcoming major growing season.