While puttering about today we made our first, pallet-garden. Wait, let me rephrase that. Manthing made the pallet bed and I placed the pallet in the general area of where I wanted it to go. Not that it was difficult by any means, a 7 year old could make it with supervision but round here, someone has to man the camera so that blog posts can be made about our projects. :)Being frugal or cheap as we are the biggest challenge was figuring out what to make a weed barrier from and what could hold the growing medium in. After approximately 43 seconds of thought, the chicken feed bags came to mind as the perfect choice. ( Dear DuMor, for all the uses I promote for your feed bags, I think you should provide me free chicken feed for ever more.) Since most of the growing medium was not going to be soil and knowing full well that a garden made from a pallet would not last forever, there really was no cheaper solution.
Manthing cut the bags into two sections and then stapled them to the side we decided would be the bottom and then over the sides of the pallet thereby making the bed. We then stuffed it full of old mulch hay we had and then used some of the soil we made in the experimental hugulkultur bed (post forthcoming but I was sick of seeing hugulkultur posts and assumed everyone else was too) to fill it up.
I think it turned out quite nicely considering the cost and time it took to make. The cost was indeed only our time since we made the soil, the feed bags were here, and the pallet is a work freebie. Total time making it was about three hours but we were just piddling about rather than working. It could probably be done in just a few minutes if store bought soil was purchased and all that needed to be done was to staple the bags on and fill. On one side I am planning on adding a trellis to be able to grow vertical. Though it is not planted as yet, I am thinking this is going to be a salsa garden.
What are you going to plant in the pallets? Why not build a lasagna bed?
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of using the pallets to keep some things in a row! I use lasagna gardening and raised beds (my main one is 5'x24' and waist high for comfort). I have some pallets and never thought of this. Too cool. Thanks for sharing.You can this year's on my other blog Rockin' Chair Reflections.
ReplyDeleteP.S. If I were the chicken-feed people, I'd give you free feed.
I have thought about this idea when I saw it on pinterest. I can't see why you do cut out the middle pieces and just leave the outside. Makes more sense to me. I would never cover the bottom either. You are basically making a "pot" and if you leave the bottom uncovered at least the roots of your plants aren't restricted. Yes there will be more weeds but they are so easy to pull from a raised bed.
ReplyDeleteBecky.. I have a couple that are much more open that I plan on making the same way... This was just an old one that had been under mulch hay that i wanted to use in some way. I like the barrier underneath and use them when I can... too many gardens to tend to be messing with weeds all the time easy or not to pull...
ReplyDeletesharlene, I have a few lasagna beds too , love them with one exception... we dont have spare paper n such to use for them and would require driving about to collect them up and they take a while to be useful... i enjoy trying different concept for gardening my favorite being poor quality or low amounts of soil to grow in... There is a post somewhere on making raised raised pallet beds... will look for it and if I find it will send it on to you ... it is pretty neat as well.
Ellen, i typically put shallow rooted things in my fun beds like the regular pallet... greens, flowers, herbs and the odd veggie for kicks... the crate bed has some veggies in it along with herbs and greens of various sorts
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