Well, we are busy back in the garden again this year. We had great plans the last few years but haven’t brought much of them to fruition. And I’ll admit that a lot of that was my poor attitude about gardening without a fence. I just couldn’t find a good spirit about all that work knowing that I would drive myself crazy trying to police the dogs out of it every minute and that if the sheep got out even one time–even for just 10 minutes!–they could destroy an entire season of work before I could stop them. (Ask me how I know…sigh) Using pallets we were able to put together a quick (and cute! if you’re into the rustic look) garden fence for very little expense.
Last year we acquired a stack of wooden pallets. And they sat for a while. And we put up one wall. And they sat for a while longer when we realize we needed more than we had managed to gather. A lot more. So we kept hauling them home…and this year we are done!
Three walls are pallets nailed together. The back wall (which sorta looks like it’s missing in these pictures) is actually round posts with woven fence wire strung along it for beans and peas.
For the gate, Mr. Fix-It pounded in two posts and hung a farm gate that we repurposed from our feed shed. We took it down last year and have been saving it for…something. So, since it’s up, we had to get to work planting. We usually use plant starts rather than seeds, except for our beans and peas. They’re a little sturdier, and I don’t have to start so early. {smile} We got a great deal from a local nursery on end of the season cold crops too.
We started with potatoes, broccoli, lettuce, eggplant, cabbage, and Brussel sprouts. And the kiddos helped, of course. They’re willing helpers when it comes to planting and harvesting–but we also make them help with the weeding along the way.
The reason I titled this Easy Pallet Garden Fence, is because everywhere you see a wooden round post in the ground in our garden, you could have more easily used a metal T-post and a hand-held post driver (or even just a hammer!) to get the same thing. You could also use any type of woven wire fencing mounted to your back wall with t-post wire clips. With pallets, t-posts, light woven wire, and wire clips, you could still put up the same thing within one day. We used large wooden posts and heavy livestock woven-wire because those happen to be the fencing supplies that we already have on hand and we have an awesome post pounder tractor attachment.
It keeps the dogs and livestock out!
And the food in!
This was the garden at planting…
And this is us 3 weeks into the season!
Since planting, we’ve added a couple peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans and sugar snap peas. We also have some early watermelons, but they don’t seem to be thriving just yet. Gardening is a lot of work–especially as the season goes along. About mid-July the weeds are just ferocious! But there’s nothing more satisfying than sitting down to a table for a meal of all your own food. We like to use the expression “picking dinner” when we go out to harvest each evening.
Are you growing anything this year?
Be sure to check out our easy and frugal weed barrier idea using free paper bags from the grocery store!
