themagnoliatreeblog

Another rustic effort with building a raised bed. I am not building for looks but basic practicality. As a recycler I often depend on what there is around me. I had the pallets and collars but I wanted it to be a raised-off-the-ground bed, so it needed legs. There were several options to give it legs, but I felt I could easily make some basic form of legs with some scrap wood.

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The benefit of a raised bed is, it’s easy dismantle the whole caboodle if it was necessary. The reason I did this was more for the fact it’s getting put on gravel on communal property and should the space be required for something else, then it’s best to be prepared.

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If it is one thing a raised bed is useful for, it’s a sort of ‘pack up and go’ deal which I have found useful with pots and containers, just take them with you if you move. Slightly different with the pots though, I can change the display at will, and seasonal growing means, the pots and containers can be shuffled around according to the seasonal planting, or be cleaned out and stored until the following year, if there is no further use for them until then.

Using the pallet collars, which are hinged at the corners, particularly if they are put straight onto the ground, then it’s just a case of picking up the collars, fold them and put it in storage and scatter the compost in the rest of the garden. You can of course put a base on the raised bed which means you can have it on the patio or any other solid surface, with the minimum of mess. I’ve lined mine with weed control material which helps to keep any spillage of compost to a minimum.

Using recycled material means you may have to be a little innovative as not all recycled items are perfect. The first pallet used in this assembly had a damaged strut on it. It’s difficult to get the nails out of pallets and since the weight would be spread over the whole pallet, I thought I might give it a little bit of reinforcement. A strip from an old vertical blind, glued onto the damage part, might help a little bit for it to bear whatever weight there would be on it.

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I will staple the strip before I move on to the next part. I also had packs of packing wool which had been used as insulation in a fruit and vegetable delivery. I had kept them with the idea of insulating the roof of the shed with them, but they stopped deliveries to my area. However, one of the suggested ways of using them was on the compost heap, but they are coming in handy as a liner for the raised bed.

The third raised bed is up. To carry on with the recycling effect, I had some drawer runners I removed from an old kitchen unit which are now helping to brace some uneven legs.