Building a Pallet Garden

So, for a crafty, DIY mom, I can be shockingly anti-Pintrest. I feel like so many projects on Pintrest are not possible by laypeople with kids, jobs, lack of experience, lack of access to specialty equipment...so, I didn't have tremendously high hopes for our weekend pallet garden project. But, as we already had most of the components in our garage - organic top soil, peat moss, fall leaves that didn't get taken to the curb last fall when I was eleventy months pregnant and an old pallet - and I really wanted a herb garden closer to the house, we decided to give it a shot. We just had to buy some landscape fabric and some plants/seeds.

Pallet garden from Pintrest

We decided to do ours "lasagna garden" style, which means that we layered leaves, compost, top soil and peat moss to form the base to grow our plants. We initially were going to plant only herbs, but decided to try some other plants - carrots, greens and beets - to see how they would turn out.

Here are the directions from Pintrest, followed by a pictorial of our project.

From Pintrest: Got Pallets? Hate weeding? Dont feel like turning up a bunch of grass? Use a pallet as a garden bed - staple garden cloth on the backside of the pallet fill with dirt and start growing! You can also place your pallet on the ground in a rocky location rather than a grassy area, this way you will not need the garden cloth to stop the weeds and grass comin through. Please be advised: Use raw wood pallets! Some that are shipped overseas may contain chemicals. 

Hate weeding? Yes! Have Pallets? Yes Don't feel like turning up a bunch of grass? Yes!!

But this sounds too easy. I wonder how hard it will be with no experience and an enthusiastic almost four year old helper?

Supplies:

• Wooden Pallet
  
  

• Landscape Fabric - $9 for a 150 Ft. roll.
• Staple gun - $10 and staples - $3 (we bought a new one - the old fashioned metal kind - as our expensive one is not great at stapling through wood)
  
  
• Planting medium - potting mix or layers for a lasagna garden. We used four bags of organic topsoil ($1.24 for a 40 lb bag), which we already had in the garage, peat moss ($4 for three cubic yards), which we also had left over from our other garden projects, dried leaves (free), compost (free)
• Plants/seeds (we spent $3 on basil plants and dill plants from the farmer's market and then about $3 total on organic seeds with plenty left over for our main garden, boxes or to save for next year).

Directions:

• Lean pallet against your house/garage. Lift with your legs and watch your toes! Pallets are surprisingly heavy! 

• Staple landscape fabric to the bottom and sides of the pallet, pulling it tight and folding under the edges and folding corners like a present.
• Overlap the fabric on the bottom and secure flap with more staples to ensure that it is "sealed" so no dirt escapes.
• Be careful not to staple thumb or fingers.

Look at the beautifully spaced staples and even edges! Type A, anyone?

• The pallet should be open on top and the sides and bottom should be "sealed" with the landscape fabric, like a present with no top, so the soil does not escape.

• Place the pallet where you'd like your garden to stay. This is important, because the pallet is heavy when it is empty and would be impossibly heavy with 100+ lbs of planting medium inside.
  
• We leveled our area first with a hoe.
  
• Don't worry if there's some weeds/grass underneath, as the garden will kill them.

• If you have a helper, you can have them use the planter as a balance beam to ensure that it is level and that they have optimal fun with this project. 

Helper Katy walking on the pallet to test the proper placement

• Fill your pallet with planting medium. We did layers of dead leaves, organic top soil, peat moss, and compost. This is FUN, don't worry if you get soil on the wood, it will wash off.

• Stop and take a video of your adorable daughter throwing peat moss into the pallet.

• Have your helper review your work to ensure that the proper amount of medium is added. Just kidding, there's no wrong way to do this, folks. Be sure to get your hands dirty and have fun.

• Plant bedding plants and sow seeds according to the instructions on the package. Water well.

• Enjoy your accomplishment and pose for a photo shoot.  Let your helper take some photos, too.

Covered in mud

I look like I have a halo in this photo Katy took. Don't worry, it's just a trick of the light.

In total, this project only took about 30 minutes with a preschool-aged helper, including time to act silly, haul the supplies from the garage/car, take photos and clean up. I call this a win!