The Pallet Garden Project

I saw the raddest idea on  http://pinterest.com/ about a month or so ago.  A pallet garden.  They used free pallets from behind your local home improvement/garden store (Lowe's was my choice).  The green on the sides was a total BONUS!

I grabbed as many as I could fit into the car - three.  I also bought organic soil and some plants.

The main thing was figuring out what we were going to eat and really use.  Vegetables, as a whole, are pretty easy to grow if you have space and water the shit.  I have grown tons of stuff in the past and I couldn't eat it fast enough or the kids didn't like it, etc.  In the end I chose green bell pepper, spicy basil, rosemary, cilantro and jumbo jalapenos called MUCHO NACHO!  I couldn't help myself.

I also had three yellow pear tomato plants, that were a result of last years garden, some strawberries and an Anaheim Chile plant that were in the existing "garden" area.  Not that it was really a garden, more like a cat litter box.  Yeah, it's true.

Another reason that the pallet garden appealed to me.  The wood slates would provide more soil coverage and less open, inviting dirt for the cats.  Add some dry red pepper flakes and no more litter box.

I decided to make the first row two pallets high; the second row one pallet high.  I had some shade cloth/screen/mesh that I found in the trailer, under the seats.  I wasn't going to use it for anything so why not reuse it?  I used a staple gun and closed up the ends of each section of the pallets so that the dirt would stay in but it would get good drainage.  Here is the first row using two pallets.

Here it is without the soil.  I kept the two greens that matched together and placed them with the more open spaced slates towards the top.

I bought three cubic yards of soil for two section garden I configured.  Make sure to use your hands and really push the dirt down between the slates of the first pallet into the space of the second/bottom pallet, if you stack them two high.  No matter how you stack them, pay special attention to the space under the pallet sides.  That area holds a lot of dirt but needs to be manually filled and packed.   Here it is with dirt.

I planted all the new and already maturing plants, gave them a good, slow water and now came the hard part.  Waiting.

To be honest, I only really waited a couple days until I went right back to Lowe's and brought home four more pallets, more soil and more plants.  But that's for next time.  

Thanks for reading and have a rad day!

~Brin

Here's the link.  You can do these vertical, horizon and more!
http://pinterest.com/pin/146015212888809127/