Pallets the gardeners new best friend

Pallets have become one of the gardeners new friends in the garden and every allotmenter will go week at the knees at the sight of a pile of pallets. Pallet wood can be turned in to so many products and the best bit is they are freely available and most end up in skips so are free. You just have to get them home then the fun begins taking them apart to get some nice planks.

But the whole pallet can be to some great uses as well put four together forming a square and you have a great compost bin. They make great vertical gardens just fill in some of the gaps so the compost dose not fall out bolt to the wall and plant up there are loads of great ideas to be found on the internet. It is amazing what folk have turned old pallets into from sun loungers to houses there is not a day when some one posts a picture on Facebook of something they have made from pallets. After all once you have taken the pallets apart it is just a plank of wood that can be turned into almost any product your imagination can up with.

I have been searching the internet a lot recently looking for pallet inspiration and there are some amazing constructions out there. I have a new project I am just about to start and it is all about pallets i am going to construct a new potting shed in the garden. I have been collecting and raiding skips for the last couple of months and hopefully I should have enough wood now to start construction. The aim is to produce a shed made from all recycled wood and cost as little as possible hopefully just the cost of the screws. Another main part of the shed is going to be a green roof or I should say an edible roof as I want to grow vegetables on it so none of the garden is lost to the new shed.



As soon as I start construction I will keep up to date with how I am getting on with the building of it.

First five days of self sufficency

Well it's been 5 days now since I started the challenge to produce at least one piece of food every day of the year. The 1st started with 3 lovely fresh eggs off our hens you can not beat your own fresh eggs freshly layed in the morning. Day two it was all about the onion you can not beat a home made onion bargee to go with a good curry and the onion was also used in the curry. Day three we turned to the store cupboard for the jam we made at the end of last summer from our raspberry's already looking forward to this summers harvest of raspberry's. Day four was a lovely omelette from our eggs two eggs beaten up with a pinch of slat, pepper and a splash of milk yummy. Day 5 we have turned to the salad patch for the last bit of rocket as the chickens managed to eat the rest to go in my sandwich. I am also going to knock up a batch of scotch pancakes or drop scones as some people like to call them they are lovely still warm straight from the pan dripping in butter.

There has been lots of activity in the garden too lots to prepare for the coming year as I need to get the maximum form every square foot. If I am to be able to feed myself with something everyday of the year. Part of the garden is on a slight slope so I have been making some raised beds. This is to try and level out the soil there will be two beds one above the other. This will make growing much easier as a level surface is always easier to work with than a slop. I should point out that all the wood that I am using is all recycled out of skips the boards are marine ply wood that was used as hording on a building site. They just put it all in skips when the project is finished as they have no use for it else where. The other project I have been working on is fitting a cold frame to the end of my other new raised bed.

The cold frame lid is an old shower door that came out of another skip the bed is just built around it. This will be great to start off early salads use as a melon pit in the summer and then fill it back up with winter salads in the autumn when the melons have finished. I am terrible for sticking my head in a skip but it always amazes me what useful stuff people do put in them and at the end of the day why pay for wood when you can get it for free. I did not quite get to finish it so I will put the last through screws in today and then I need to sow a few early crops in pots in the greenhouse.