Strawberry Vertical Pallet Garden

Ages ago we picked up a pallet off the side of the road and have been dreaming up how we were going to use it. This weekend we finally made it into a vertical wall, I know it's been done, but it works so well I thought I should share.

In our last house we had a garden bed full of heirloom strawberries that multiplied from four plants I got from the Marion Life Community Market. They were doing great, but the millipedes kept beating us to them. Nate did some research and came up with replanting them into PVC pipes with holes cut out the top and mesh gaffed on the ends. He went above and beyond and even put dripper pipes in it so we can just pour water into the pipe sticking out of the top of the end hole. It was a super simple solution and took him about an hour or so to knock up six.

Our one small family including our sponsor child. 

Next to me is 2 of the 4 original Heirloom strawberries. Within 18 months the bed was full and over flowing!

This weekend Nate pulled off the back of the pallet and slid in the two strawberry pipes. Once we get the tomatoes out of the other pipes we might plant more strawberries and nail in the other pipes.

I also wanted to make some garden beds, but the thought of buying wood is so expensive so I got googling (yes, it's totally a word) and discovered this page of inspirational pallet delights. Now I'm going to hit up the local businesses to see if I can score some free pallets!

What have you tried with pallets?

A life lesson in math - 9 vs 1 trailer load of soil

It turns out that I should have paid more attention in math class. Mr Teoh, my 9th Grade math teacher would be so pleased to hear that I finally agree. It turns out those pesky decimal places are rather crucial! I diligently measured the garden beds, but when it came to multiplying said area I may have multiplied it by 50cm rather than 50mm. Long story short I almost had 4.41 tonnes of soil delivered instead of 441kgs! Fortunately Candice at Jeffries was happy to alter my order no hassles!

The thing I love about Jeffries is that they are green waste recycling plant. They take the green waste from Adelaide and turn it into usable gardening products. I love recycling! Chances are if you live in Adelaide and use your green bin, it will end up at Jeffries. Also, your local playground, kindy, school probably has their bark chips too! Missy Moo's kindy just had bark 'blown in' which was quite fun to watch for all the kiddies.

We chose the Jeffries special soil as it is 50% soil and 50% compost already mixed together - genius. It also doesn't stink!

They also deliver, which we gladly accepted!

The truck driver did an amazing job of maneuvering the delivery in as close as possible to our car port!

Half a tonne - not 4.41 tonne! So glad we don't have to move 9 trailer loads of soil!

Nate has already dug in the back section where I cleared the other day, but I still have to pull out 20+ spider plants out the front before we can reclaim our carport/play area. I'm really looking forward to ordering the trees soon!