The Hanging Pallet Garden

We moved into the new house in August and really I’ve been talking about “growing stuff” since I moved to Australia nearly two years ago, but after this most recent move I really started talking about it.  I even grew (if you can call it that) with very limited success cherry tomatoes.  It all went downhill when we took off for the US around Thanksgiving time.  The automatic watering system failed and my poor plants went kaput.

Perth really is a difficult climate to grow the types of vegetables and herbs that I’m looking to grow.  It is dry.  It is hot and the soil is very sandy.  Add to that a very small nearly non-existent space to plant things at the current house and well, I pretty much have the ultimate list of undesirables.  We had to think outside the box.

Enter google and pinterest and that great world wide web we all love so much.  Solution = HANGING PALLET GARDEN!

Hanging Pallet Garden

Off we went in search of free pallets.  We grabbed a stack of them and got to deconstructing and building, and by “we” I really mean “him”….  What a beautiful result.  I couldn’t be happier with it.  Boards were cut and nailed and screwed in to the bottom of each compartment and then each compartment was lined with weed cloth.  The next step was to fill with potting soil and then finally fill with herbs.  And yes, I did do that part.  I quite like getting my hands dirty.

Weed Cloth Lined Compartments

The herbs of choice were sweet basil, Thai basil, garlic chives, oregano, thyme, sage, cilantro (coriander) and dill.  It will take quite a bit of watering to keep them going but now that it is finally Autumn cooler temperatures will make that a bit easier.  For now I’ll water them by hand but should I be successful with my project we will look to automate watering, and again by “we” I mean…. Oh you get the idea….

Some of the Selected Herbs

With limited space for planting the pallet garden has been a really great solution for us.  It was easy to make and relatively inexpensive.  The bonus is that is it transportable so I don’t have to leave it behind when we move house again.  The pallet can come with us.  Fingers crossed that it will be a success!

Planted Pallet Garden

Now I fully admit that this beautiful pallet hung on my fence unfilled for a couple (perhaps a few) months but in reality with many summer days in the high 90’s and low 100’s it was simply too hot to plant.  And yes, really that’s the excuse.  At least the one I’m sticking with!

4 Comments

  • Sam

    I love this! Looks really good against the corrugated metal fence background too. I’m about to start a window sill herb garden, so far I have managed to keep a supermarket bought coriander pot alive for a good month (and an indoor lemon tree alive for a week!). Time to venture into some other herbs and flat leaf parsley is next. Also thinking of trying out growing things from food scraps, seen a lot of that on pinterest, apparently spring onions and garlic are easy to get going, they say you can do it with lemongrass too – I’d love to get that going as it’s such a rip to buy from the supermarket. Then I just need to get ginger and chillies on the go and I’ll be ready for a curry in a hurry 😉

    • Lauren

      Spring onions are quite easy. Just stick the ends in a glass of water and in a day or two you’ll see them start to grow! However, I do recommend you change the water almost daily. The water takes on the onion smell and it can get quite offensive. There are some good websites out there that will tell you which store bought produce is good for this. To date, unfortunately, I have been unsuccessful with avocado. I would LOVE to have an avocado tree!!

      Let us know how you go! And I’d love an invite for that curry!

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