Cris
Building Raised Garden Beds from Pallets
Why would you find yourself building raised garden beds from pallets? Pallets are relatively easy to come by and a great source of free lumber. Sometimes they can be difficult to work with, but if used right, the different woods give such great visual appeal. I love pallet projects! I decorated the top and bottom of my greenhouse using pallets too, that way the garden all ties in together to be really amazing.
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Pallets are not super fun to break apart, but it can be done in a variety of ways. A pallet is typically two or three 2×4 boards, sometimes with some notches and then thin slats on both sides. The slats are usually nailed on but trying to get them off with a regular hammer is not usually possible. We used a cats claw or chisel with a hammer to separate the slats from the 2×4’s and then cut them off using a saws-all with a metal blade. This was the easiest method. The alternative is to use a deck wrecker tool, which sometimes breaks the boards leaving you with fewer usable boards.
Once you find a steady source of pallets, and know how you are breaking them down, the possibilities are endless! We tried to use all of the pallets to the best of our ability to reduce waste. Putting the 2×4’s to good use for the framing, and then the slats for the sides worked out great.
The Raised Beds
The frames were either 2 feet by 6 feet, or 2 feet by 7 feet, customized to fit our space. Starting with making some legs for the frame, we made use of those notches in the 2×4’s to make a sort of peg. This peg is buried in the ground to keep them where we want them. The sides are 18 inches tall from ground level to the top of the bed. When using a 2×4 that is a max of 4 feet long, you will need to attach 2 to a center leg to get the length you want.
Once you get your dimensions, and build your frame, you are ready to take those slat boards and attach them to the sides. I got creative and did a chevron pattern, which turned out to be my favorite of all the patterns. The easiest one was to just cut those slats in 18 inches and screw them onto the frame. The third pattern we attempted was kind of like the bricks are laid, it looks nice but was definitely the hardest to assemble.
Knowing that the slats will never make a nice tight seal coming from used, reclaimed pallet wood, the inside of the beds is lined with landscape cloth. Since you can’t really by this cloth in an 18-inch-wide strip, I got a 3 foot and cut in half so there was actually twice as much length than I paid for. This would then keep the dirt inside the boxes rather than washing out between the cracks with each watering.
Filling The Beds
Have you ever tried to purchase fill dirt? That stuff is expensive, and I am super cheap! To take up space in the bottom of the beds, we put bales of straw in the bottom before adding dirt. The straw is actually a really good choice as it is organic, will compost as it ages, absorbs and holds water. It can also support the deeper roots of the plants.
After putting about a bale and a half in each bed, we added about 6 inches of good rich garden soil on top of the straw. Unfortunately, it was still too cold to actually plant when the beds were done. We had to wait for the weather to cooperate while our plants were hanging out in the greenhouse. While we waited, we designed our watering system and worked on putting in wood rounds for the walkways between the beds.
Planting The Garden
We ended up making a total of 9 raised beds out of pallets, so when it came time to plant, there was a ton of space. Four of the beds have super cool arched trellises in them to support those climbing plants. All of the plants did really well and were happy in their raised bed homes. The harvest was awesome so there are plenty of spaghetti squash, pickles, and canned tomatoes to last through the winter.
I am looking forward to building a few more this coming spring to expand the garden. I would like to have a few more to have enough tomatoes to can next fall. Check back in early summer to see the update with even more pictures of how to make these awesome raised beds from pallets.