Don't drink and drive bro

The NZ Transport Agency has way better drink driving adverts than anything in Australia...

Watching that was thirsty work. I could murder a beer right now.

PS: all right, one more for the lols.

Pallets and puppies

Now that the weather is starting to improve, I’ve been feeling the need to get some things growing in the garden. Unfortunately, most of the garden still needs another week or two before the green manure crop has sufficiently decomposed so that it doesn’t damage new roots.

To kill time until then, I decided to try out a recycled shipping pallet project that I’ve seen around a couple of times on the web (for example here and here).

The idea is basically to take an old abandoned shipping pallet, reinforce it a little, wrap it in landscaping fabric, fill it up with dirt, plant it out, wait for the roots to take hold and then prop it against a wall as a simple vertical garden.  There are more detailed step by step instructions at the links above.

Sourcing the pallets can be a bit tricky – there’s a fine line between abandoned and stacked waiting for the pallet company to collect them. Thankfully a misspent youth of nicking traffic cones and empty kegs from the back of pubs left me well placed to deal with this moral quandary.

We cut the pallet in half to make it a bit more manageable – a full size pallet would be ridiculously heavy when complete and would also cost a fortune to plant out. Here’s the pallet sanded down and ready to close in the back:

 Around this stage the neighbour’s puppy came to visit:

Reinforcing the back with some cheap treated pine fence palings:

Below you can see the pallet filled with dirt. We’ve wrapped the back and bottom in landscaping fabric to keep the dirt in while allowing for drainage, and covered the front gaps with chicken wire to keep the dirt in. We had to cut holes though this to plant in.

Plants, planting and planted:

 

 

The finished product just needs a few weeks horizontal for all the plants to take root properly before it’s propped against the wall. I’ll plant out the top gap around then as well. The plants are mostly succulents mixed in with a few grasses and some potted colour for the top.