How to Build a Patio Planter Box out of Pallets

I have always wanted a garden, but because I live in an apartment, it makes it very difficult to grow much of anything. I wanted a relatively large planter that I could make for close to nothing, and that's when I decided that pallets were the way to go. Make sure that you use pallets that are trash, but in good condition. All of the pieces do not necessarily turn out perfectly, but the box works perfectly for growing flowers and vegetables. I used two pallets to build this box, and it is about 32" wide by about 18" deep by 16" tall. I originally wanted two of these, but so far, it seems to be perfect for our needs, and does not take up too much space on the patio.

1. The Breakdown: This was by far the most time consuming process. I wanted to give up significantly more quickly than I would like to admit (by the first nail not coming out, I was done). However, I had several plants that needed the space, I had been talking about building this for weeks, and I had already found the pallets and gotten the tools out. Therefore, we were building the damned box. The best way that we found to tear down the pallet was by cutting as closely to the lower support beams on either side as possible, and then wriggling and prying to remove the board from the center support post. This was the hardest step for us, but once you finish the breakdown, the rest is a cake walk, I promise.
You will also need corner support beams, as well as base boards, to provide most of the structural integrity of the box, as there will be a great amount of weight added. For this, I used 6 of the support beams of the pallet. In order to prepare the support beams for the box, we used a crowbar to remove the small pieces of board that were remaining from the previous step, as well as any nails. We did pull a few of the nail heads off. If this happens, just hammer the nails in, or fold them over with your hammer. It does not matter whether they stay in or not, as long as there are no sharp edges.
For this box, I used 3 "layers", which I will describe in a minute, each consisting of two long pieces, and two short pieces. The actual lengths that you use will vary based on the amount of useable pallet boards that you will be able to extract. In my case, the long boards were 32" long, and the short boards were 18" short :), and you will be able to determine the actual exact-ish lengths once you have chopped up your pallets.
For this step, plan on 6 full length support beams, 6 long beams, 8 short beams, as well as beams for the base. I used scrap wood for this section, and I had to make individual adjustments to the assortment of remaining pieces in order to make the bottom fit, as the bottom was based around the way that all of the other pieces fit.

 2. Assembly:

• Layers - The first step to assembling the box is to create the "layers". Layers consist of two short (depth) pieces, and two long (length) pieces. I connected each piece by screwing through the long board into the short board with one screw (I would recommend predrilling your holes to save you some time and strength). Four screws later, your layer is done. I originally wanted four layers, but I decided that for my purposes, 16" tall was high enough. If you would like a taller, deeper box, just add more layers. Repeat the process to create two more layers. Keep an eye on your lengths of wood, to make sure that they are close to the same size.
• Support - Now to connect the layers, we will use the support beams. I cut each beam in half, to create a 16" post for each of the corners of the box. Screw through each layer in the corner to connect the post to the layer. I put a screw in each long board, as well as each short board, to give the box the most strength. Also, as one more strong point, I added the final 2 regular short boards to the sides of the box. I screwed through each of the long sides of the layers, 6 screws total. I added this section to hopefully avoid any bowing out of the center of the box.
• Bottom - In order to form the base, I screwed the two remaining boards into the 4 corner support posts with the longest screws that I had. After this, flip the box over. Although your support beams may vary a small amount, because we assembled everything upside down, the support beams will now be level (like magic!). Now for the base. This part will take some finagling , and as you can see, I had to cut out some of the edges in order to go around the support posts. Do your best, and remember that it does not have to be water tight. I screwed both sides of each base board in to hold it in place and maybe to add some strength to the boards, but I do not think that this was really necessary, as the boards will not fall out.

• Lining -  Line the box with plastic. This is important for a couple of reasons. First, we do not want water and dirt squirting around everywhere. Also, we don't want the box to rot due to being damp. The main reason that we are lining the box, however, is to prevent any of the chemicals or contaminants from the wood from getting to your plants. I have used several trash bags to line the bottom and sides of the box. Make sure to poke some holes in the plastic so that water does not get trapped in the bottom, and use an industrial staple gun to staple the plastic to the walls. This does not have to be perfect, and the weight of the dirt will do most of the work to position the plastic.

•  Fill - Finally, fill the box with dirt. Most people recommend layers to allow for adequet drainage, and had we thought about it, we would have done a couple of different layers of soil to make sure that our plants did not sit in water. In this photo however, I just have gardening soil.

   

All of your measurements will vary based on the useable portion of the pallet, but I have found that most pallets are around 36", so the useable portion will be up to 32" long. If you would like a larger box, there are larger pallets that we have seen while out and about, but this is the most standard size. You could always place two of them end to end to create a larger box. As our first major building project, I have learned a lot about what to do, and what not to do, and hopefully this post will save you some trouble in building a gardening box. I can tell you that it is so rewarding to build something for your family, and it was definitely worth all of the time and effort that we put into building it.

Growing Food from Kitchen Scraps: Romaine Lettuce

Growing lettuce from the lettuce stump that you would normally throw away is relatively easy. Simply leave a stump, approximately two inches tall, and place it in water. I change the water every day, and within a couple of days, it will begin to grow. After about 2 weeks, you can plant it outside.

Harvest the leaves as needed, or you can also just chop the whole top off again, and leave it planted. Because it does not have to reestablish roots, it will regrow faster than the previous time. The best part about this is that if you have a lettuce stump to regrow every week, you should be able to eventually harvest an entire head of lettuce every week. It will not get as large as what you see in the grocery store, but it is surprising how much it will grow.

If you notice that the lettuce begins to grow very tall, and starts to have small flower pods develop at the top, you will want to cut this section off. If you do not, the leaves will begin to taste bitter. This portion of the plant produces seeds. When a plant goes to seed, you can use this to get seeds for a crop next year, but if you are not interested in seeds, allowing a plant to go to seed will simply make it taste bad.

Of course, I did not know this, as this was my first time growing lettuce, so I was just excited that I grew something so well that it started to flower :) . As you can see below, I started growing lettuce every week or two, so that I could continuously harvest them, and the one in the back left corner has "gone to seed", and will be bitter and taste bad (but I could collect seeds from this plant).

In addition to being (what I consider to be) amazing to watch grow in such a short period of time, this would be a great way to reduce your expenses, and to also have control over what you eat. By growing your own food, you can ensure that your produce is fresh, and also have it close at hand whenever you are cooking. I have also started growing herbs as well, and I have found that cooking is much more fun when you can go outside to grab whatever ingredients you would like to experiment with. They taste better than what you get from the store, and the fact that I grew them at home gives me a great sense of satisfaction. I will go over how to grow herbs more in a future post, but I would absolutely recommend saving your kitchen scraps, and seeing what you can get to grow at home!

Growing Food from Kitchen Scraps: Green Onions

I have recently discovered that you can re-grow food from your kitchen scraps. These include onions, garlic, potatoes, lettuce, celery, green onions, pineapple, and many others. This is a very economical way to get fresh produce, and also a great science experiment! Most of these plants take very little time to grow, and can be reused in as little as a week or two. My favorite plant to regrow is green onions, as they grow so quickly, and you can use them over and over again. To regrow green onions, simply place in water in a well lit area, and overnight, they will begin to grow.

These green onions, as you can see, start with a large amount of roots, and their growth is immediate. I have found that I have to find uses for green onions, or they start to grow everywhere. You can leave them in water, and they will continue to grow, but I have heard that after the third or fourth time of regrowing, they will start to loose some of their flavor due to a nutrient deficiency. I would recommend planting them at some point so that they can grow in soil. You can cut as much or as little as you would like based on your needs, but if you cut more than the top 2/3 of the plant, you risk that plant dying. Water every few days in soil, and I keep mine in direct sunlight, and they have been very happy.

These green onions were planted as scraps, each only about 2 inches long. They grow constantly, and are very tall after a month or so. I use green onions in my cooking weekly, so we are able to maintain some semblance of control over this plant, but as you can see, after two months, the plant begins to look a little unruly. The plant on the left side of the pot is a potato that I have been regrowing from scraps, and I will have a post about that one to follow.

I will go over many of the other plants that you can regrow from kitchen scraps, but since this plant grows so quickly and without fail every time (for me at least!), I would definitely recommend starting your scraps garden with this one!

Sprouting Basil: A great way to start a garden!

I have tried growing basil from seeds, I have tried growing a basil plant from the store, and I have tried growing the basil from the grocery stores. No matter what I do, it seems that I manage to kill just about everything in our garden, which is especially frustrating because my parents are so good at growing things, so you would think that my green thumb would be genetic. Some of the problem has to do with living in an apartment, so everything that I do is container gardening, but it shouldn't be that hard. I decided to try sprouting basil from clippings to grow a basil plant, and I was very surprised by the results. I put up a post on one of the facebook trading groups in the area that I was looking for clippings, and I immediately had several replies from people who had huge herb gardens. I guess growing plants is only hard for some of us :) . I took some clippings, and then I put them in water. I have heard that adding a growth stimulant is not necessary, but I figured that with my luck that I would need all of the help that I could get. I changed the water every day, and since I do not have a place with great sun exposure indoors, I put the clippings under my under-cabinet lighting in my kitchen. After about two weeks, I lost two of the four, but this is what I found.

Roots started to grow very quickly, and three days later were noticeably longer.

 

Finally,at three weeks, it was time to plant.

I planted the basil, and I put it in a very sunny location, as that is what I had read would be best for the plant. After the first day, it was looking a bit droopy, so I put it on the other side of our planter box so that it would not get much, if any, direct sunlight. After that, it started to do very well, and get much bigger. After a couple of weeks, some bugs began to eat is at night. Over two weeks, I tried a soap water spray, a small cup of beer embedded in the dirt (thinking that it might be snails), garlic, and finally an onion top. I never found out what was eating the plant, but the top of the onion near the base of the plant seemed to be enough to keep whatever it was from coming back to the plant.

Here are my clippings after about two months, still with holes in them from the bugs, but the leaves never died, even though they were half gone.









Because I had such luck with the clippings, I put up another request for more basil clippings. Craigslist or even just walking around the neighborhood would have been another option, but since it worked the first time, I decided to post again on Facebook. I had several people who offered their clippings, and so I started the process again. After a few months, this is what I have.

This is several basil plants, and there are a couple in the back that seem to have died, but I have left the stems there as a form of support for the basil, as it seems to like resting on the sticks. I have been trying to prune these every week or two to get the plant to fill out more, and I will be moving these to another planter with more space in the next couple of weeks, in the hopes of getting the plants to spread out more. I am very excited that these plants have grown so well, and I would definitely recommend growing from clippings to anyone who is looking to start an herb garden, especially people who want a fast growth, or a smaller chance of murdering their plants.