Easily grow your own vegetables in these quick to build raised beds.
Raised beds make gardening easy, plus using free wood from old pallets means they’re very trendy and cheap to build too.
Free source of good quality wood.
Many companies only reuse the standard Euro pallet and non standard ones pose a disposal problem. Mine were from the USA and were made from rustic looking, hardwood timber.
Simply ask around or look for them piled up outside business in your area. Most places are happy to get rid of them!
Now for the worst part! Taking pallets apart can be tricky as the wood is hard and brittle, plus it’s nailed together using special nails designed not to pull out. Care needs to be taken to avoid excessive waste due to breakage. Remove any protruding nails first if you can. Then use a long wrecking bar to gently lever the timber parts apart slightly, hopefully loosening the nails enough to pull them out. You can buy special nail lifters to raise the nails a tiny amount and then simply pull out the nails with the wrecking bar. Or , if funds allow buy or make a ‘pallet buster‘ if you are serious about reclaiming pallet wood.
Alternatively you can just cut the top and bottom timbers off close to the larger supporting timber using a jig or circular saw. You end up with slightly smaller lengths but then you only have the centre nails to remove. This is what I did to build these planters.
I built 50mm x 50mm (2″ x 2″) posts into the decking area about half a metre high. Then I cut the pallet wood to length and nailed it to the posts. I planed the edges a little here and there if there was a big gap, otherwise I rolled with the rustic nature of the wood. I covered the corners with vertical pieces and mitred the top pieces to finish it off.
I stapled ‘landscape fabric’ to the inside to stop the soil from leaking through any gaps. Then I decided to give the planters one coat of yacht oil to give it a little protection; although technically, these planters or raised beds are ‘sacrificial’ and I don’t mind if I have to re-build them in a few years.
I had some fun with the photos I took and put them into a crude stop motion sequence just to see what it would look like! I just need to figure out how to add music now…
What have you built using pallets?
Stay well
By Ian Anderson
Comments 3
I read that 10% of wood pallets test positive for E.coli. I’d really like to make some off these raised bed boxes, but do you think it’s safe?
Author
I wouldn’t worry about that. Unless you’re collecting pallets from a strange location like a food factory or a medical facility I’d say the risk is negligible.
I get my pallets from a ceramic tile store so I’m not worried. E.coli is phenomenally common, it’s everywhere anyway. Plus I believe is doesn’t survive very long outside the body so if your pallets have been kicking around outdoors for a while, they’ll be safe anyway.
Good luck!
Ian
Thanks!