Vertical Pallet Garden

I’m sure many of you have seen one of these vertical pallet garden projects before or maybe even made one.   Normally these are geared toward our urban homesteading brethren, but we had a perfect spot for one and the perfect pallet so we decided we wanted to get in on the action.  A word of advice, since pallets are used to ship all kinds of things it is best just to avoid using standard pallets for any edible plants as they could be coated in chemicals.  If you plan to do this for edible plants then make sure you look for a heat treated pallet.  It will be marked with an HT like this.

In my case I needed to resize the pallet height wise for the space it will be occupying.  You may not need to.  I simply picked the height I wanted and cut it off at that height.  I then used any boards that were cut off to add extra boards to the back of the pallet.

Next, I wrapped the back, sides, and bottom with landscaping fabric.  I purchased mine at Tractor Supply but you can also order it online here.  I started on the inside, top of the front board, followed by the inside bottom of the front board, then wrapped it around the back board, and stapled at the top.  I continued doing this until I had pockets formed every where in the pallet that I wanted to plant.  After starting this we decided to change it up a bit and add a couple boards on the front and create two deeper pockets for some slightly larger plants.  The back won’t be the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen, so if that bothers you or it is going to be seen you may want to staple one last piece over the entire back to help cover everything up.  It doesn’t bother us, so we just left it as is.

Some instructables will tell you that at this point you should flip the pallet over, dump soil on it, work it in everywhere nice and snugly, and begin planting.  Then you are to leave it lying down for a week or two to allow the roots to establish themselves.  Since we basically created planters just like you would plant in with the landscape fabric, we didn’t worry about that and went ahead and stood it up.  I attached mine to the top rail of our porch with a few 3″ outdoor screws and we started planting.

Once that was done, we started planting our plants between the pallet boards until we had everything crammed in that we wanted.  We planted a couple plants to each side if they were smaller plants, and one to each side for our larger plants.

Keep an eye on the soil moisture content and water as needed.  Pay attention to each level as they can dry out to varying degrees.  There you have it, a gorgeous vertical pallet garden for all your kitchen herbs.  Time to enjoy some home grown herbs!  Have a great day and God bless!