I recently dug some deep beds in my back garden for planting veggies. While you don’t have to border deep beds off, I find it useful as it teaches my dogs where they can’t walk. Today, I will show you my go-to method of building planting borders out of pallet wood. These are designed to be functional, they aren’t going to win any awards for looks that’s for sure. If you just need something to throw some compost in and plant a few veggies, these are perfect as they’re cheap and easy to make.
THE PLAN
I tend to keep my planting beds low by either using the deep bed method or creating a low raised bed. For both types of planting areas, I find that the width of one average pallet wood plank is high enough for my preference, although I do have some raised beds that are as high as two planks.
Essentially what this means is that I make a large box out of a few pallet wood planks. That’s it! It’s very simple to do and yet very functional. If you want to make raised beds that are higher, you could make the borders the width of multiple pallet wood planks instead.
MATERIALS & TOOLS REQUIRED
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Materials
- Pallet wood – quantity will depend on how big you need your border to be
- Screws – shorter ones for attaching joining blocks to pallet planks
- Screws – longer ones for screwing the frame together
- Damp proof course/ membrane*
- Wood stain/ paint*
*these are optional but both help the wood last longer
Tools
- Hand saw – you can use a type of electric saw if you prefer
- Measuring tape
- Ruler
- Pen/ pencil
- Long straight plank such as a level
STEP 1: SORT OUT YOUR PALLET WOOD
The first thing you need to do is get hold of all the pallet planks you are going to use. I needed to make three deep bed frames and I wanted each one to measure 160cm long and 120cm wide. Because of the lengths of the pallet wood planks I had, I calculated that I could need up to seven pallet planks per frame.
I dug through my pile of pallet wood and picked out seven planks that were roughly the same width and thickness. Then I did that two more times. If you make sure that the planks you’re planning on using for each frame are roughly the same sizes, it makes life much easier when you’re screwing them together later on.
STEP 2: PREPARE THE PALLET WOOD
Depending on the state of your pallet wood, you may need to double check that it hasn’t got any nails left in. Mine didn’t. You don’t have to sand the wood but I did this because I wanted my planks a little bit cleaner for staining later on. Pallet wood can also be very splintery and sanding helped with that.
STEP 3: PREPARING THE LONGER BORDER SIDES
My bed borders were 160cm long and these sides were what I prepared first. Most of my pallet wood planks were 100cm long so I had to use two to make each long side by cutting each one to 80cm. I needed six long sides in total (because I’m making three frames) so out of each of my three piles of pallet planks, I used four similar looking planks and cut each one to 80cm. I then paired them up by matching the width/ thickness.
STEP 4: CUTTING JOINING BLOCKS
The way I join the pallet planks together is very primitive. As I said, these bed borders aren’t after beauty awards! I simply get a small pallet plank cut off and screw each of the planks to it.
To prepare these joining blocks, I used the 20cm off-cuts from cutting down the planks for the long border sides. I cut these down further to be just shorter than the plank width. For these long sides, I needed three of these joining squares per length – 18 in total for all the bed frames.
STEP 5: BUILDING THE LONGER BORDER SIDES
To join the two pallet planks together to create one long side, I laid them in position against a long level to make sure they weren’t going to be wonky. If you don’t have a level, you can use another pallet plank but make sure it’s straight.
I then cut a long strip of the damp proof course that went from one end to the other. The damp proof course is basically a thick piece of plastic that is waterproof. This isn’t necessary but I think it helps stop the pallet wood from rotting as quickly as it stops the soil from touching it directly. It will of course still be touching it from below and it will get from the rain but still – every little helps as they say.
The final step was to position one of the joining blocks where the planks joined and screw it down. I used four screws in total – two in each plank. I didn’t attach the other two joining blocks just yet.
STEP 6: PREPARING THE SHORTER BORDER SIDES
For two of my bed frames, I actually managed to find 120cm length pallet wood planks. I didn’t need to cut these down as they were perfect – no join would be required!
For the third frame though I wasn’t so lucky and I did have to join some cut offs together. I was trying to be economical and use as few planks as I could so I ended up joining two 60cm cut-offs together for the one side and three 40cm cut-offs together for the other side. I had to cut the two 60cm planks from full pallet boards but for the 40cm ones, I just used the cut-offs from these 60cm cuts and I only had to cut one additional 40cm piece.
I also went ahead and cut another three joining blocks to join these up.
STEP 7: BUILDING THE SHORTER BORDER SIDES
For the two frames where the shorter sides were whole pallet planks, I simply cut some damp proof course ready. For the third frame, I went ahead and cut some too but then screwed my prepared lengths together using the joining blocks.
STEP 8: ATTACHING EVERYTHING TOGETHER
To attach all the sides, I screwed the remaining joining blocks to the edges of the long sides. Then, I simply screwed the edges of the shorter sides to the joining blocks attached to the edges of the longer sides.
To finish off the frame, I stained it using Cuprinol Decking Stain (I know, I know, this isn’t decking but I already had an open tin so here we are).
THE RESULT
The results are average looking but very functional planting frames. They can be filled to the top with compost and used as low raised beds but I put them over previously dug deep beds and planted them up with veggies. Nice, easy and quick.
