mtgarden gal
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Posts: 123
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2011 1:46 pm
Location: Southern Montana

raised beds made from pallets

Hi all! I found this video showing how to make some simple raised beds from pallets and it looks pretty simple, cheap and cool. My questions are:

Would that be deep enough for crops such as squash, zucchini, broccolli, etc?
Has anybody done this before?
Does it look like a good idea?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvpIfbfVER8

DoubleDogFarm
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Joined: Sun Mar 28, 2010 11:43 pm

Interesting project. I think it is to shallow for most crops. I would only grow crops like lettuce, spinach, asian greens, kale, chard.

If the tomatoes grow for them, do they need a ladder to harvest? The plants are starting out at 3ft tall and going up from there. I suppose they could just let them sprawl over the sides.

Eric

vermontkingdom
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Location: 4a-Vermont

I think it would be quite difficult to grow any large, leafy plants in a bed this high. With no actual contact with the ground, I think you would have to water the system every day. In addition to having a large garden, I also have a number of Earthboxes positioned along a shelf on one of my fences. It's amazing how much water is lost from each of them during hot, windy weather. Because these pallet raised beds are so high, evaporation/transpiration rates would be enormous. Rates would be much lower for lettuce, spinach, chard, etc. but these plants really don't like too much high intensity light, heat or lots of air circulation so the system might work well for them in the spring or early fall but probably not in the summer.

I use lots of raised beds but nothing of this height so I have no personal experience. Maybe I'm off base on this one.

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Fig3825
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Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2011 3:40 pm
Location: Alexandria, Virginia

It looks like you can adjust the depth of the bed and, therefore, could plant just about anything that doesn't NEED to root deeper than the height of the palette. To change the depth, you just put the horizontal palette lower on the vertical palette.

This still does not address the issue of reaching tall plants when they start fruiting... And combating bugs on leaves that are out of reach...

I guess you could always build a deck around it...but then aren't you defeating the purpose?

The guys in this picture think this is a fabulous idea...but once their garden gets going they will learn the ins and outs of what they are doing and will most likely reengineer their system for next year applying what they have learned. :) Very much the same way I learned what I learned over the past few years since I started gardening.

mtgarden gal
Senior Member
Posts: 123
Joined: Thu Apr 07, 2011 1:46 pm
Location: Southern Montana

ok everyone, thanks for your honesty and opinions - much appreciated!!



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