I don’t know if we are resourceful, environmentally friendly or cheap, but whatever we are it works.  There is a local company that throws away non-standard size pallets, a standard is 4 foot by 4 foot for those of you not up on your pallet regulations. These pallets are 44 inches by 63 inches and I had the wonderful idea to use the pallets to make raised garden beds.  And my husband loves me enough to say “sounds great, where do we start!”  I gave Ry the basic idea of what I had in mind and he made it happen.  The finished product is a 22 inches tall by 63 inches long by 33 inches wide.  The finished beds are just tall enough that the dogs don’t want to get in them and just low enough that the kids can still help me plant. So, here is how Ry did it.

He started with three of the non-standard size pallets, a roll of black weed fabric, scrap pieces of 2×4’s, a screw gun, a staple gun, some staples and some screws.

Ryan cut two of the pallets in half. Then the third pallet he cut in fourths.

Once all the pieces were cut out Ry used a staple gun to attach the weed fabric to the panels. To help give the beds some strength Ry reinforced the corners of the beds with scrap pieces of 2×4’s that he had cut off of other pallets. This is a great picture to show the height of the beds.  They are slightly above knee level.  (Or dog head level, depending on your measuring tool.)

Ry filled the beds with some of our mulch.  Search my blog posts for mulch, if you don’t know our mulch from heaven story.) The last 6 inches of the bed he filled with top soil.  It took 10 bags. I want to plant root veggies in the beds, if you are not planing root veggies you might not need as much top soil.  Each bed cost less than $20 total including the top soil. The picture below is our finished bed with some recycled windows on top.  It makes an instant cold frame.  We are starting to harden off our onions, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and cauliflower. 

I am very impressed with these raised beds.  They look great and are an economical solution to our poor soil problem.  Most of our backyard is fill dirt with chunks of bricks, rocks and concrete.  I am so excited about trying to grow carrots in these beds.  I will let you know how it turns out.

What have you built with pallets? I would love to hear your ideas.