I want to show you how you can cheaply
turn a really small space into a productive garden. The space behind me is
not that much different for what you might find on your front porch perhaps
or a balcony or even a small courtyard in an apartment complex. So let's have a
look at what we can do. While I get to work in the background I'll let you know
the plan. When you have limited floor space the last thing you wanna do is use
it up with something permanent and bulky, so a vertical wall garden here is the
ideal solution. The space I have to work with is slightly larger than the width
of a pallet, so it's the perfect size for a pellet garden. The first step is to remove
the timber slats we don't need. Without a Jimmy bar this is about as fun as it
looks, it's not hard but it does take time and some are a little more stubborn
than others. Keeping safety in mind, make sure you take out any nails as you go. Having previously made a similar albeit
more basic vertical garden I know that soil can dry out really quickly. The idea
this time is to combine two pallets to create three double slat, double width
rows, making a total of six individual beds, that each hold plenty of soil. This
should reduce the need for daily watering except on those really hot days. The next step was to mock-up which slats needed to go on the other side, and which
ones I wanted to move up or down. Thankfully on this side it's much easier
to get them off. It was about now that I really regretted
hammering that last nail in, because it was right where I needed to position the
nail on the replacement slat. Oh well. Live and learn. At the end of this video I'm gonna
be planting these beds out, I'll also talk through what everything cost and
how long it actually took me to build it, so make sure you stick around for that. This was all pretty easy and rather
therapeutic call me simple but bashing stuff with hammers is a lot of fun. That's the front done now time to move on to the slats for the back pallet. The broken slat here doesn't matter at all because it will never be seen, and by the
way, I'm just reusing the old nails. Now it's time to join the two pallets
together. Never one to waste a resource I used the leftover damaged slats to make
the feet and joining braces. At first I was going to make them all the same size
but then I realize that if I made the joiners slightly smaller they'd be
hidden which would look a lot nicer. These will actually perform two roles,
joining the garden wall together and helping to hold the soil in place, which
you'll see a bit later. At first I thought I'd need four feet at the bottom
but ended up going with just the three. Attaching the first few joiners was a
little tricky. It would have been easier with some clamps but the 10 meters I'd
have to walk to the shed and back seemed a little too far at the time, so I made
do without them. Once the first was on and then the feet, the rest came together
really easy. To make sure they'll never be any danger
about falling over, even if a child or pet tries to climb it I've added these
feet. These were made for some off cut timber I had but you could easily make
them out of the offcuts flats just stuck together. Next a lick of paint. Holding the soil in place I'm using some
shade cloth offcuts, cut into 60cm x 50cm lengths. I fixed these in with
a stapler being sure to fold the edges over to make sure it looked nice and neat. If I wasn't in Covid19 lockdown right
now I'd probably have just gone and bought some potting mix, but luckily I
have some sheep manure, some worm castings from my worm farm and a bit of
leftover soil I can mix together to create a rich growing medium that will
retain moisture well. The beds took more soil than I thought which is great news
for the plants. I estimate you'd need about four bags of
potting mix, something in the order of 100 to 150 liters if you went that way.
I would like to grow some strawberries in one of these beds but we're coming to
the end of the season here. I do have some potted up so I'm just going to put
these in here for the moment and I hope I get a few strawberries out of them
before they die back for the winter. Make sure you get high quality potting mix if
you're going to use that and you probably want to add in some compost or
manure in there as well. Everything you can do to retain moisture is a bonus in
a vertical garden, so before planting I used some soil wetter to give our new
garden the best start possible. In this bed I'm going to be putting some
mint, two types in fact. Some common mint and some Vietnamese mint which can
battle each other out for supremacy. They are both pretty vigorous growers but
they do like a lot of water. These are just cuttings which I'm planting
directly into the soil. Using a small twig to make holes is a good idea but
otherwise they're just going straight in. Common mint is a great summer flavor
it's really nice in cool drinks and always smells lovely and fresh. I haven't
done anything to these cuttings other than pull off some of the leaves.
Removing the leaves helps the cutting put its energy into growing roots from
where the leaf has been removed. So plant them nice and deep. Do the same with the
Vietnamese mint, it's another great summer flavor that you can chop up and
add to stir-fries or spring rolls and it's really easy to grow. In fact this
will just grow in a glass of water. It'll be interesting to see in a couple months
time as they're fighting each other for space you might even have to do some
refereeing. Be quite gentle when working with the soil here
not that mint really cares, but it's a good habit to get into, not to damaged the roots of smaller plants. A bit of watering will help fill in the rest of
the soil. In this bed I'm putting some Italian
parsley, the seeds are gathered from a couple of plants I had growing earlier
this year. Again I'm not being very scientific here I've got heaps of seeds
and it grows like a weed, but I love it. It's a great fresh flavor that you can
add the salads chopped up and sprinkled over eggs or pasta sauce, it really is
wonderful and so so easy to grow. On the top left here I'm going to plant some
rainbow chard, or colored silverbeet, it's another thing that's great to have
growing close at hand. I collected these earlier this year as well and I've got
plenty of seeds so I'm putting way more in here than I probably should but it's
really very hearty and a great addition to so many meals. You can even eat it raw
when the leaves are young which will be good if I have to thin them out a little
bit. Next to them I've got some lettuce seedlings, another thing I always like to
have close at hand for salads or sandwiches. Once established you can just
pick a few leaves every day and they'll keep going for months. Below the lettuce we have some coriander or cilantro. I know there are many people
out there who don't like this but I'm certainly not one of them. I love it.
It's another flavor that just screams summer to me and it's great with curries
and so many other Asian or sub-continental foods. It does need a lot
of water though which is why I'm putting it down lower, as soon as it dries out it
tends to bolt the seeds and I want to get as much out of these as I can before
the winter months set in. Another great thing about coriander is that it
attracts a lot of beneficial insects in particular ladybugs, so if it does go to
seed don't be in a rush to pull it out it's a great thing to have in your garden. It's time to water these guys in which will help wash the soil and around
the roots. It's a good idea to water these daily in the first few days, this
will help ease them from any transplant shock and help the soil settle. After that, a couple of times a week should be fine unless it's really hot. We're on the
homestretch now. I'm adding a little bit of slow release fertilizer because even
though there are heaps of nutrients in the worm castings, leafy greens are
really hungry plants and this will give slow long-term nutrients like nitrogen
and potassium, as well as trace elements like copper, manganese and zinc, which
plants need for healthy growth. Next I'm just adding some sugarcane
mulch to help the water attention and it is a good idea to water this afterwards
to stop it blowing away. And lastly I like to add a few spent coffee grounds
to ward off the slugs and snails and other bugs that might want to chow down
on our seedlings. I find this a really good cheap and safe alternative to using
poison deterrents. Now there is one small change I want to make because I found a self seeded wild rocket plant in my front yard. We do love rocket in this
house so I thought it would be a great addition here. I'm gonna sacrifice a
little of my Italian parsley to make space but that's ok, they can fight it
out later on. It wasn't the most surgical of extractions but thankfully
this is a pretty hardy plant, that said I will take off most of the leaves to
help it get through the transition. Plants do store a lot of energy in them
so it'll be out of bounce back a little bit better this way. Leaving the leaves
on forces it to use up its energy keeping those leaves alive, but this way
all the energy goes into the new growth. This area doesn't get a heap of direct
sun, so things won't grow too quickly but that can be good for herbs and salad
greens like these. As I said, earlier the joiners help hold the soil and the shade cloth in place, but they also allow for the water to drip through to the bed below. Now that we've got to the end of this you guys are probably wondering two things one how long did it actually take me to make this and two how much did it actually cost. Well it took me about five hours, plus a little bit of time to let
the paint dry, so it's something we could easily do in a single day. The most
time-consuming bit for me was taking off the timber slats off the pallets but I
think if you had a Jimmy bar they'd probably come off a whole lot quicker.
Well in terms of costs everything I used I had already so it didn't actually cost
me anything I even had the seedlings, but if you were to do it from scratch what
would it cost you? Pallets are pretty easy to come by, so I think keep your eye and you should be able to get them for free without any problems.
The rest of the timber I used came from the discarded slats, so there's no cost
there either. I used roughly three meters by 1.2 meters of shade cloth, of black
shade cloth, I used about half a litre of paint although a little bit more would
have been quite handy perhaps four bags worth of soil, of
potting medium, I used about 30 nails and a few screws but again those could have
been salvaged from the pallets, there was the soil wetter, the slow release
fertilizer and a couple of punnets of seedlings. In Australia that had cost you
under $100 but I'd be surprised if you couldn't do it for a lot less than that,
just by keeping your eye out and looking for free stuff that people are giving
away or leftovers here and there. Little sample pots of paint and stuff like that. I hope this has been really helpful if you've got any questions or want to let
me know how you went with your pallet garden, let me know in the comments. You
can also tag the bite-size garden on the socials I'll put the links in the
description below. If you enjoyed this please like and subscribe and that way I'll know to keep making more. All the best, take care out there and don't
forget to grow more and waste less.
