Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[Knobby]

Dear Wife is the love of my life, but part of that is that she knows not to feed me dishes with patis (fish sauce) in it. It's really not agreeable to my taste buds. She loves it, of course. So, if she makes something with patis in it, she will put a warning label on the leftover container, so I know that is her food - not mine!

I am also not a fan of oyster sauce and a few other "native" dishes from the Philippines that are unfamiliar to my palate.

The good news, of course, is that I love most of her cooking and she is a great cook. I'm not sure about mung bean soup, but she can make great soups out of just about anything.

Since I started making pallet wood raised beds in the backyard, she has asked me to grow some of more native food, like upo (bottle gourd) and ampalaya (bitter melon).

Bitter melon...

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Bottle gourd...

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I have posted some pictures of the pallet wood trelllis I made for the bitter melon to grow on. That has worked out really well...

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This year we grew the bottle gourd in a raised bed without a trellis and it spread out about 30-40 feet in all directions. Next year I will build another pallet wood trellis for the bottleY gourd like the one I made for the bitter melon in the pictures above and hope that it does not take over the entire garden area.

Yeah, that's my next project for next season...put in a garden so we can grow some of our native plant foods. Right now, we only have an herb garden on a raised bed. This year was spent focusing on putting in a new lawn, building chicken/duck coops and digging a small pond.

I do shots of patis! hehe

 

[Knobby]

Beware, this thread is addictive...

lol..this is the first thread, on this forum, that I check up on.

 

[gtaus]

Yeah, that's my next project for next season...put in a garden so we can grow some of our native plant foods.

I am really happy with the 4X4 foot pallet wood hügelkultur raised garden beds I built. Cost me less than $2.00 for the nails and screws. I hope to build two more pallet wood raised beds this fall before it snows. Get them ready for next spring. Also, need to build more beds with a trellis for the bottle gourd and cucumbers.

I do shots of patis! hehe

Shots of patis!

 

[chickengr]

I am 100% european but I love asian food.

I am thinking of a raised bed near the house. my garden is on a slope and not next to the house so herbs, lettuce and onions should be grown near my kitchen.

 

[Sally PB]

We will be married for 35 years in a few months.

Congratulations! 35 for us, next May.

Time flies...

It sure does... Blows my mind that we have lived here for 29 years...!

 

[Sally PB]

Not a pallet project, but a reclamation one:

We took a bunch of planking off a porch roof yesterday. There's still some more to go, we just ran out of time and energy.

It's 1x6x8, and in great shape. We put it up about 10(?) years go (the "time flies" thing applies here) when we thought we'd be able to rehab this old farmhouse. It's too far gone, so we are reclaiming the metal roofing we put up and the porch roof decking. I bet the value of the wood had metal has doubled!

Anyway, the wood is destined for a pantry build project in our basement. The wood will need some sanding and some staples removed, but otherwise is in great shape.

The pantry shelves are going under the stairs down to the basement, so even boards that have splits and aren't usable the entire 8 feet will have lots of value. And make some kindling too; that wood is nice and dry.

Bless his heart, hubby put that stuff up with screws, not nails. We not only have the wood, we have the screws to build the shelves.

 

[Sally PB]

Oh, I don't think I've posted on this thread about this old farmhouse... Story coming...

We bought it when it went into foreclosure. The land adjoins ours, and has a huge polebarn on it. (Polebarn is in need of critter proofing, but we just store "stuff" there... like all that metal roofing.) We had ideas of fixing the place up and renting it out. Air BnB? To a friend?

Anyway, hubby patched and reroofed half of the roof, the half that was leaking. The other side could wait.

You know what happened... never got A Round Tuit. Finally got the Round Tuit this spring... too late. The roof on the other side was in much worse shape than he thought, and there was too much damage. 5" of rain in April? Right though the upstairs ceiling, down to the ground floor.

[This is not on hubby. The owner trashed the place when he left. He also didn't close it up, and raccoons moved in. They trashed it and pooped everywhere. The place would have had to have been gutted to the studs. But we should have reroofed it as soon as we could. World enough and time. And money...]

I said we are not spending the tens of thousands of dollars it would take to make this habitable, only to make back a tiny fraction of that in rental money IF we could get it to the point someone would pay to live in it.

Ok, so, demolition? It's going to become more and more of an eyesore. $20K. We don't have that kind of $$$ sitting around. A neighbor suggested we call the local fire department. They sometimes burn buildings down for the practice of putting them out.

Cut to the chase... yes, that is this building's fate in October. I'm sorry to do this; it was built in 1936. We don't have the equipment to safely deconstruct it, more's the pity, as it "had good bones."

And to tie this all back in to this thread's subject... The fire chief has put a pile of pallets on the porch, as they will need some combustable materials. I mentioned that I'd love to have pallets to take apart for the wood, so if he had some more...? He said he might. I might get a pallet shake shingled roof over part of my chicken run yet!

 

[fuzzi]

Oh, I don't think I've posted on this thread about this old farmhouse... Story coming...

We bought it when it went into foreclosure. The land adjoins ours, and has a huge polebarn on it. (Polebarn is in need of critter proofing, but we just store "stuff" there... like all that metal roofing.) We had ideas of fixing the place up and renting it out. Air BnB? To a friend?

Anyway, hubby patched and reroofed half of the roof, the half that was leaking. The other side could wait.

You know what happened... never got A Round Tuit. Finally got the Round Tuit this spring... too late. The roof on the other side was in much worse shape than he thought, and there was too much damage. 5" of rain in April? Right though the upstairs ceiling, down to the ground floor.

[This is not on hubby. The owner trashed the place when he left. He also didn't close it up, and raccoons moved in. They trashed it and pooped everywhere. The place would have had to have been gutted to the studs. But we should have reroofed it as soon as we could. World enough and time. And money...]

I said we are not spending the tens of thousands of dollars it would take to make this habitable, only to make back a tiny fraction of that in rental money IF we could get it to the point someone would pay to live in it.

Ok, so, demolition? It's going to become more and more of an eyesore. $20K. We don't have that kind of $$$ sitting around. A neighbor suggested we call the local fire department. They sometimes burn buildings down for the practice of putting them out.

Cut to the chase... yes, that is this building's fate in October. I'm sorry to do this; it was built in 1936. We don't have the equipment to safely deconstruct it, more's the pity, as it "had good bones."

And to tie this all back in to this thread's subject... The fire chief has put a pile of pallets on the porch, as they will need some combustable materials. I mentioned that I'd love to have pallets to take apart for the wood, so if he had some more...? He said he might. I might get a pallet shake shingled roof over part of my chicken run yet!

Sorry to see it go up in smoke, but I do understand.

 

[fuzzi]

I love most of the Asian food Dear Wife makes at home. But certain dishes are too "native" for me. Likewise, she prefers not to eat some of our American food. We work it out without any problems.

We will be married for 35 years in a few months. Time flies...

Anyways, since I started building new pallet wood raised beds out in the backyard, Dear Wife has asked me to grow more of her native tropical veggies. I said I would try, and even built her a nice pallet wood trellis for the bitter melon. They grew much better than we had hoped, so next year we might start some plants inside the house and give them a head start. Where I live in northern Minnesota, it's Zone 3b, a long way from a tropical climate. So, we have had good luck with her tropical veggies but not as good as they would grow in the tropics, of course.

Congratulations!

DH and I are about to hit 43 years. My father-in-law said it wouldn't last six months. We proved him wrong.

 

[gtaus]

I am 100% european but I love asian food.

I am thinking of a raised bed near the house. my garden is on a slope and not next to the house so herbs, lettuce and onions should be grown near my kitchen.

I became a big fan of raised beds about 10 years ago. I live on a lake and my soil is mostly sand. Nothing grew very well in my sandy soil. When I started building raised beds, I filled them with a high-quality topsoil and immediately had better results. Since I got my composting chickens, I fill my pallet wood hügelkultur raised beds with the top 6-8 inches of topsoil and chicken run compost mixed 1:1. That really works for me. Chickens, composting, and gardening all go together.