Today we have a special treat. I am certainly no gardener but I love to think that one day I might become one. Maybe one day I can build a pallet garden like this one even!
This is an awesome guest post by Janine Mergler, the Editor of Families Magazine – a local magazine for parents with children aged 0 – 13 jam-packed full of things to do with kids, parenting, family health, education and family friendly freebies from your local area. You can find more information about gardening with kids (and all sorts of other inspiring stuff) here: http://www.familiesmagazine.com.au/articles
Here is an easy to build pallet garden that you can make in less than one day with the right equipment. Get the kids involved to teach them about where their food comes from and how it grows. These are suitable for even the smallest of home gardens.
Things You’ll Need
- Shade cloth or other ‘porous’ material
- Garden soil (preferably good quality with fertiliser through it!)
- A good pair of garden gloves
- 1 wooden pallet
- A heavy-duty staple gun and staples
- Seedlings
Step 1
Find a wooden pallet. It is best not to use ‘treated pine’ so check carefully. You can pick them up from timber yards or shops are often throwing them out. Ask a store owner if you can ‘upcycle’ their rubbish.
Step 2
Cover the bottom with a fabric mesh. Use a heavy-duty staple gun to secure it in multiple places – around all the sides, top and bottom. We used around 150 staples! Make sure you stable across the length of each section to stop the dirt shifting if you plan to stand it up when finished.
Step 3
Fill it up with good quality soil – it takes more than you think – about 150 litres of soil! Poke all the soil down into the nooks and crevices. Keep ‘jiggling’ the pallet to ensure it is all full.
Step 4
Pop in your plants/seedlings and firmly push them down. Cherry tomatoes are a great first plant if you are gardening with kids. They are easy to grow and the kids love picking them and eating them straight off the vine.
Give them a good drink of water! Let them rest.
Step 5
If you plan on standing your pallet up against a wall, DON’T do this for at least 2 weeks until the plants have taken hold and their roots are established.
Step 6
Carefully stand up your pallet garden. The plants will ‘hang down’ a bit until they become accustomed to their new position. Choose the plants carefully and they will acclimatise to their new direction. We later added flowers to the top row of this garden that attracted the bees and helped our strawberries along.
Thank you so much, Janine. I live in hope of my green thumb developing. In the meantime I’m going to stick with paper flowers instead.
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