Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[gtaus]

I like to cut strips of cloth from old t-shirts to use as ties for my tomatoes and other plants. I find they do less damage to the stems than plastic or string. T-shirt material allows some give when we have high winds or when plants get heavy as they get larger.

Plus they are free!

Thanks. That's a great idea. I have some old bedsheets that I have been cutting up as shop rags. That should make some nice ties.

Free is better, plus you use things up instead of wasting them.

 

[gtaus]

I put cardboard down between my raised beds. It works well, and is FREE... I overlap the cardboard, leaving about an extra inch or so where it meets the bed, so there's no gap between the cardboard and the raised bed. Then I anchor it down with clay pots, but anything with weight, like bricks, would work. Eventually the cardboard gets wet, starts to decompose, and no longer needs to be held down.

Yes. Cardboard works great for pathways. I used to put cardboard down in my in-ground garden between the rows and cover it with grass clippings. By the end of the summer, everything had composted down and became part of the soil.

Cardboard is a great weed blocker for a few months, but where I live it has to be replaced every year. I wonder if I lay down cardboard and covered it with wood chips, would it block out weeds the following year(s)? I can get wood chips for free, so that might be a good topper for the cardboard.

 

[gtaus]

I cut up old t-shirts and socks to make wraps and ties for my squash plants last year.

Looking at your poles driven into the raised bed reminds me of why that does not work for me. I build 16 inch high hügelkultur raised beds and have logs in the bottom half of my beds. Then I top off the bed with a topsoil/chicken run compost mixture for the top 6-8 inches. That is great for growing food, but I cannot shove down a pole or tomato cage except for maybe that top 6-8 inches. With the topsoil/compost on top, the soil is not very packed tightly and any pole would not have much support.

That is why I have considered building individual tomato cages out of pallet wood for my determinant tomatoes and maybe just zip tying them together for more support since I cannot shove them deeply into the hügelkultur raised bed.

Something like this zip tied together...

 

[chickengr]

I watched that video, and a bunch of others, from Gardner Scott on making a tomato trellis for indeterminant tomato plants. He presented two methods of tying the tomatoes off to a twine. The first method was to wrap the vertical twine around the stem every so often as the plant grows. The second method he showed was using tomato clips, which clip on the twine, but you keep the twine straight and don't wrap it around the stem.

The rope/twine method would certainly be a lot easier to build than the wooden trellis system I have been thinking of building.

I found this tomato clips 300 pack on Amazon...

View attachment 3774285

I have never used tomato clips. I wonder if a person could just use cheap zip ties and have them loose, like the clips, on the plant. Seems to me it would be the same. But zip ties that size are like $1.00 per 100 ties on sale and I have bags of them already in the garage.

I think I liked the clip method better. But either method would work if I built a trellis frame like I did last year for Dear Wife's bitter melons. I would just hang down twine to the plants as needed for them to grow up vertically.

I have lots of longer salvaged wood 2X4's to build another trellis like this...

View attachment 3774288


I also have some extra fencing to staple on to that frame if I ever wanted to use it for cucumbers, for example. I know how to easily build that trellis and it is rock solid.

Well, thank you for the suggestion. That twine/string method looks like a lot less work to make compared to some of the other designs I was considering. I think I might try it out this year.

I use rubber twine and reuse them. they can last 2-3 years in my hot climate.

 

[gtaus]

For tomatoes I use home made cages made of field fencing. Tops are contained with a weave of strapping material between the posts. Sometimes I have to tie in a wild branch. That's when I like the t shirt ties.

I like the way you grew the squash up right. Great idea.

Last years tomatoes.View attachment 3774396

Very nice looking tomatoes. Good idea on the horizontal strap weave for the tops.

 

[Molpet]

I wonder if I lay down cardboard and covered it with wood chips, would it block out weeds the following year(s)?

The weeds don't come up but the seeds land in the mulch and go down.

Looking at your poles driven into the raised bed reminds me of why that does not work for me. I build 16 inch high hügelkultur raised beds and have logs in the bottom half of my beds.

Could you put posts/poles before filling?

 

[gtaus]

I do the same thing with cardboard in the walkway, but I use it as a base and put mulch over it. It works really well! Two years now and havent had to pull any weeds except on the very edges.

How deep is your mulch on top of the cardboard? My cardboard was fully composted down to nothing before the end of our summer and weeds were already poking up. That's why I am thinking cardboard would be good to initially cover and kill and weeds, but a thick layer of wood chips would be needed to prevent future weeds from growing.

 

[Sally PB]

I have some old bedsheets

They make GREAT emergency covers on nights when frost threatens.

I use the white/light colored ones over my dog "harden off" crates. To begin with, to cut the sunshine down on the new seedlings.

 

[gtaus]

Could you put posts/poles before filling [the hügelkultur raised beds]?

Probably on the new pallet wood raised beds that I have just built. That's an option. Thanks.

 

[UrbanHomesteadTX]

How deep is your mulch on top of the cardboard? My cardboard was fully composted down to nothing before the end of our summer and weeds were already poking up. That's why I am thinking cardboard would be good to initially cover and kill and weeds, but a thick layer of wood chips would be needed to prevent future weeds from growing.

We just did a couple of inches. Its true the cardboard composts down, but with the layer on top I think it lasts a bit longer. Either that or our dry summers might keep our carboard from breaking down quite so fast. Whatever the case, it works real good for me. Two years later still only weeding the very edges of it!