A Longer Growing Season in a Simple Way
The soil gets warmer faster during the spring when you use an elevated plant bed, enabling you to sow your seeds or put down your plants earlier during the spring. The pallet collar protects the soil and the plants against cold winds. It prolongs the entire growing season, making it possible for you to enjoy your harvest earlier in the spring and further into autumn. You don’t need to build an entire greenhouse to enjoy the benefits of a long growing season.
It’s easy to make a grow box from pallet collars. Also, you don’t need to make them yourself. You can buy prepared pallet collars, and they are cheap, especially if you buy used collars. All you have to do is to stack the pallet collars on top of each other until you reach the desired height of the bed.
Keep Weeds and Pests Away
Using pallet collars makes it easier to keep pests and weeds away. The pallet collar functions as an obstacle that makes it harder for pests and weeds to get into the garden area.
By also covering the bottom with a ground cloth, you are protected against weeds that usually enter the garden from below. If you want to make it even harder for snails to get into the garden, you can attach wet sandpaper around your cultivation collar. Snails will avoid the wet sandpaper and stay out of the garden!
You can easily keep birds out of your berry garden by draping a net over the garden. Birds will not be able to get to your strawberries or other berries and you will have a much higher yield.
Covering a pallet box garden with netting is more effective because the pallets keep the birds out from the bottom as well!
You Can Grow a Garden On Fastidious Surfaces
Using a grow box, you can also grow in the garden, for example on surfaces with stone, gravel or poor soil – places where it otherwise would have been difficult to grow anything at all.
Cities are experiencing a green revolution. Having access to naturally green spaces, such as gardens and parks, have proven to be important for the well-being of people.
In cities you can grow on the roof tops or on other surfaces without natural soil using pallet collars.
It’s an excellent way to add a little bit of exhilarating, fresh greenery in an environment that is otherwise dominated by asphalt and concrete. All you must do is fill your planter with soil and fertilizer, plant it and then watch as the vegetation sprouts.
If you have a small garden, having a grow box is a great way to get the most out of small spaces. The grow box also protects from accidents as they are clearly separated from the rest of the garden.
Better Posture
Why would you wear yourself out in the garden when it isn’t necessary? One of the benefits of using an elevated garden bed is that it’s good for your back. You don’t need to bend as deep when you work with an elevated garden bed made with pallet collars.
By stacking the pallet collars on top of each other, you can easily adapt the height on your grow box, giving you a more comfortable posture when working.
This also makes it fun to work in the garden. If you suffer with an achy back or joints elevating the height of your garden will make gardening more enjoyable!
Prepare Your Grow Box
When you’re using pallet collars, you will get started quickly, and you will avoid the hard work of preparing a bed by digging in the ground. All you need to do is to place the grow box and get started.
Smooth out the soil where the grow box will stand. Place it in a sunny location. Consider the placement of your grow box with regards to what you’re going to grow.
If you’re going to grow vegetables, you might want it to be located near the kitchen entrance. Imagine the luxury of having your own kitchen garden, and to have access to fresh, organically grown herbs and vegetables during the entire growing season.
Remove the weeds under and surrounding the grow box. To prevent weeds from entering from below, you can cover the bottom of the box with a ground cloth. Fold up the edges of the cloth and attach it to the inside of the collar.
Fill the grow box with fertilized potting soil. It’s great if the soil is mixed with fertilizer, such as cow manure. You can also add a garden compost to the bottom of the grow box.
The fertilizer will be used up after about three weeks, prompting you to fill it up with more fertilizer.
Adjust the depth of your grow box to the kind of plants you will grow. For plants with small root systems, such as lettuce, it might be enough space to use only one pallet collar.
For plants with more complicated root systems, such as potatoes and carrots, you will need a deeper layer of soil, about 40-50 centimeters.
You can easily adjust the elevation of your grow box by stacking two, three or more pallet collars on top of each other.
After you have pressed down the soil, you are ready to sow your seeds and put down your plants. Remember to water them.
Keeping your soil moist is much easier in a grow box. Just cover it up with a fiber cloth to protect it from strong sunshine and thus prevent evaporation.
Build a Seedbed With Pallet Collars
A simple way of building a seedbed is to cover up your pallet collar built grow box with material that lets the sunlight in, and at the same time retains the heat. This enables you to further prolong the growing season.
You can use old glass windows or any transparent plastic material to cover it up. During warm summer days, it can get too hot for the plants to be comfortable.
During these times, it’s important to have a ventilation system, enabling the excess heat to disappear. You can easily do this by opening the shutters or by lifting the lid of the seedbed.
Hotbed
If you want to prolong the growing season even further, you can build a hotbed. A hotbed is a seedbed with some kind of heating system. The heating can be done by electric heating cables, but it can also be done by using manure, hay or compost material that generates heat during the decomposition process.
For example, horse manure decomposes faster than cow manure, and thus generates more heat.
Place horse manure mixed with hay on the bottom of the bench in a 30-40-centimeter-thick layer. Water it, and then cover it with soil. It will take some time before the hotbed can reach the temperature needed for planting, so make sure you prepare it several weeks before you want to plant in it.
If you start cultivating early during the year, when the nights are still cold, make sure to cover up the hotbed with something like an old mat or hay in order to preserve the heat in the box during the night. During the day, the cover can be removed to let the sunlight in.
Compost Box For Garden Waste
Pallet collars are suitable for making compost boxes for garden waste, such as leaves and grass clippings. Just stack the collars on top of each other to your desired elevation and fill them up with garden waste. Preferably mix in some branches to keep the compost pile light. Occasionally dig around in the compost to let in some oxygen.
When it’s ready to be used in the garden, it’s easy to access the compost soil. Simply lift the collars one by one.
It may be helpful to cover an open compost box in the winter. If there is heavy rainfall, the nutrition can escape from the compost. You can use a tarp for shelter.
Garden Design With Pallet Collars
Pallet collars are versatile when you want to design your own garden and give it a personal touch. You can build both upwards and sideways and combine several collars in different patterns or geometric shapes in order to create a visual effect.
Why not paint your garden collars in colors that harmonize with the vegetation?
If you have a slope in your yard you can make a terrace by digging in the slope and then place the grow boxes on different levels, like steps.
It is a beautiful sight when the lush vegetation stands next to each other along the slope.
You can also build a staircase in the slope. Just fill the different terraces with gravel or some other material that you can walk on.
Make your garden accessible year-round. If you want to be able to walk through the garden dry-shod during rainy days, you can replace the turf between the grow boxes with aisles filled with gravel.
The possibilities are endless when you want to design your dream garden in a simple and inexpensive way. The sky’s the limit for what you can use them for.
When you consider all these benefits, it is easy to see why pallet collars being used in gardens is becoming popular around the world!