I have never been a huge gardener. While I was in graduate school I lived in a second story apartment, and after that I lived in a townhouse where we weren’t allowed to tear up the grass. After Mike and I got married we had a house but it wasn’t great for planting, plus while I was working full time, I just wasn’t interested.
Now that I am a stay at home mom, and have (slightly) more time I have become more interested in planting some of my own herbs, vegetables, and flowers. Another motivating factor is that fact that at one point someone who owned our house was very into landscaping and gardening although everything was badly neglected by the time we bought the house. I feel like I have a lot of good groundwork and would love to restore it to be the beautiful backyard I envision it as.
Unfortunately, this spring has started out pretty rocky here in Pennsylvania. On Saturday night we even had FROST. Needless to say we lost several plants and are holding on to hope over some of the others. Because of this I was looking for a way that I could plant herbs but be able to take them in if it was getting cold, or even during the winter.
That’s when I came up with this idea to use old pallets to make a pallet garden. The best part is that I only spent $6 for the ENTIRE project (minus the herbs themselves). Here’s what I did.
You can find find free pallets all sorts of places. The best places to check are pool stores (they have LOTS of things brought in on pallets), construction sites, Craigslist, or just ask around if anyone has one. You can even ask some local businesses if they have any. You can get the containers for the plants from any home improvement or garden store, but these ones I used actually came from The Dollar Tree. I had to drill drainage holes in the bottom but they fit PERFECTLY. The containers can be a little on the light side, so what I did was add a little bit of gravel to the bottom in order to give it some weight and so it won’t blow out.
As you can see right now there isn’t anything in my planters and I actually need to get several more containers. This is because our weather has been so crazy recently. Once I am completely SURE that we won’t be getting anymore frost the plants will be going out. Hopefully that will be soon.
Another great thing about this planter besides the fact that it is so cheap to make is that it would work perfectly for someone who lives in an apartment or a townhouse. You can put it on a balcony at an apartment and in the backyard of a townhouse and it won’t damage anything. You can just throw away the pallet if you move!
What great ideas do you have for ways to grow plants when you don’t have much space?
Wow, looks great and very simple to do too!