How to Make a Wood Pallet Garden for Herbs Tutorial

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DIY Herb Garden with a Recycled Wood Pallet

Have you ever seen the gardens planted in a wood pallet? They are pretty awesome and a fantastic way to not only recycle pallets but also to conserve space! I originally spotted the idea at the Urban Food Producer blog via Pinterest who got her idea from Life on the Balcony.

Since I like to just run with an idea, I didn’t follow their directions. I just looked at the pictures and figured it out from there!! Not only is this a great way to save money by not purchasing pots and recycling old pallets but this would make a fantastic way for a school to plant a garden too!

You’ll need dirt, seeds or plants, landscaping fabric (the black liner you put in to keep the weeds from coming up) and a wood pallet of any size! We found these two pallets in the garbage on the side of the road and they were in great shape so we carted them home & got started!

DIY Garden from Recycled Wooden Pallet

The other sites I saw started with full-sized plants since they were going for aesthetics but since seeds were cheaper and we are making a gardening project out of it with our kids, we’re totally starting from scratch! Plus I’m going with the theory that it’s cheaper to plant seeds this way then by purchasing pots! Let’s hope this works! 🙂

FIRST – you’ll need to flip your pallet so that the bottom side is up as you see below. This will be the back side of our planting pallet and we will be stapling the landscaping fabric down on this side so that the dirt doesn’t fall out.

DIY Garden from Recycled Wooden Pallet

Begin by stapling the landscaping fabric down at the end of the pallet. We actually found it easier to stand it up on its end. It doesn’t matter which end you start on.

DIY Garden from Recycled Wooden Pallet

Make sure to staple the corners down well so the dirt doesn’t seep out of the corners!

DIY Garden from Recycled Wooden Pallet

NEXT – roll the landscaping fabric all the way down the pallet and staple the fabric to the backside of the pallet.

DIY Garden from Recycled Wooden Pallet

It’s better to put too many staples in than not enough. Remember you are trying to keep the dirt from falling out!

DIY Garden from Recycled Wooden Pallet

Make sure that as you staple you leave one end open to pour in the dirt! We ended up triple layering our landscaping fabric because it looked so thing. (We found it very cheap at Aldi!)

DIY Garden from Recycled Wooden Pallet

Now I’ve seen this done two different ways. Above you see that we propped up our pallet and poured the dirt in the top. I have also seen the pallet laid flat down and pour in the dirt that way too. Totally your preference.

DIY Garden from Recycled Wooden Pallet

The other sites I’ve seen say to leave the pallet laying down flat for about 3 weeks since they are planting full-sized plants but since we are starting from seeds we decided to leave our pallet sitting up angled at about 45*.

We are figuring the seeds will grow up and towards the light and we’ve got it angled quite a bit so I can’t wait to see how this turns out! We used almost 5 bags of topsoil so we didn’t have enough leftover for our second pallet. This pallet I made is to grow spices in. I’m hoping it will help keep the ants out too but we’ll see.

DIY Garden from Recycled Wooden Pallet

I planted Thyme, Chamomile, Cilantro, Garlic Chive, Basil, and Oregano. Once things start growing I’ll make sure to update the post and put new pictures in!!

DIY Garden from Recycled Wooden Pallet

DIY Garden from Recycled Wooden Pallet

That’s it! Just make sure that you don’t prop the pallet straight up until the plants have had a good couple weeks to root! I also recommend trying to pack in the dirt as much as you can thru the pallet slots to decrease the amount of erosion that will occur if it is outdoors in the rain.

Below are some more herb kits & garden posts I’ve personally purchased, created and love:


 

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2 Comments

  1. DaydreamingRealist says:

    I love this! That’s a great idea for so many reasons–weeds, space, organizing–I just love it! 🙂

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