NU6 by Jopet Keyhole garden using plastic drum with windows

Hi Prof. Jorge,

Below is my NU6.

Plastic drum keyhole garden for urban houses

I was so inspired by the keyhole garden of my MBA classmate Dr Edu Tuazon in Concepcion Tarlac where vegetables and herbs were grown organically. According to Dr. Tuazon,the keyhole garden concept originated in Lesotho Africa where people were taught to plant vegetables for their daily food and to sell their extra harvests for their income. The keyhole garden is shaped like a key hole where there is a hole in the middle and surrounded by blocks to keep the soil intact. In the hole, they put their fruits and vegetables trimmings and scraps to be used as fertilizers.

My suggestion is to make use of a plastic drum to make a key hole garden. This way, households with very limited space can still grow their own vegetables organically. Also, people will no longer need to buy basic and nutritious vegetables for their everyday meals. We just need to cut the sides of the plastic drum and make 6inches by 4inches windows around the drum (See figure 2 below). Push the cut part inside to help the soil keep intact. Then we need to put a PVC pipe at least 6in in diameter and put many holes around it (See figure 1 below). Be sure that the size of the holes should be enough that files cannot go through. Put some soil on the bottom of the drum then put the PVC in the middle and fill the drum with soil. You can now plant vegetable seeds on the windows and on top. You can now also start putting vegetable and fruit trimmings and scraps in the PVC. Remember to keep putting enough water on the PVC for the scraps to decompose and become fertilizer. You can put a lid cover on the PVC to keep away the flies, If you cannot find a big plastic drum, you can use small plastic containers like the 5 gallons water containers and just use smaller PVC pipe. If you have plastic 1.5 liter soft drink bottles, you can cut and join them together to make a long tube in place of the PVC. In time, the seed will grow and you can harvest vegetables for your family’s consumption. I believe this method will surely help every Filipino family provide nutritious and healthy meal and can also be a source of income for their family. This is also very timely since the government is now enforcing waste segregation and this will surely optimize the fruit and vegetable scraps that we just throw away.

Thanks and regards.  4

Jopet