DIY Project

DIY PROJECT: RECYCLED PALLET VERTICAL GARDEN

Summer is waning, and since I am a diehard autumnal girl, I’d usually be very excited by now. But I have to be honest — this lush and vibrant pallet vertical garden is making me want to stay in summer for another month or two. There have been many pallet projects and many vertical garden projects, but none combine the two elements as well as this tutorial developed by Fern Richardson of Life on the Balcony and recreated by Steph of the local spoon. I like this so much, I might have to squeeze it in before I focus entirely on fall projects. — Kate

Have a DIY project you’d like to share? Shoot me an email with your images right here! (Low res, under 500k per image, please.)

There is nothing more adorable than little baby succulents. I happened to have a teeny porch desperately in need of love that didn’t get a lot of sun, so succulents were the perfect low-water, low-light choice. I also loved the idea of making something out of a pallet, one of those items you see everywhere — you have to wonder what happens to all of them, and I was excited to give one a purpose and home on my neglected porch. It transformed the space and was easy and lots of fun to make (the best part of all might have been my trip to the nursery where I could buy adorable baby succulents to my heart’s content). — Stephanie

Materials

• a pallet (I found mine for free at a local garden store — mine measured 25 x 38 inches)
• roll of landscaping paper (this can be quite expensive, but you don’t need as much as comes in a typical landscaping roll, so you might be able to find someone’s excess on Craigslist or at a local garden shop)
• sandpaper
• staple gun and staples
• hammer and nails
• potting soil (I used 2.5 cubic feet for the 25 x 38 pallet)
• adorable succulents or other plants of choice

Instructions

1. Sand down any rough spots on your pallet. If the back of your pallet doesn’t have much support (mine was basically open on the back), find some scrap wood, roughly 3 to 4 inches wide and 1/4 inch thick (or the thickness of the rest of your supports) and cut it down to the width of your pallet. Using two nails on each side, add supports so they are roughly even down the back of your pallet.

2. Double or triple up your landscaping fabric and begin the stapling fun. Staple fabric along the back, bottom and sides of the pallet, taking care at the corners to fold in the fabric so no soil will spill out. (See photos for details on folding corners.)

3. Lay the pallet flat and pour potting soil through slats, pressing soil down firmly. Leave enough room to begin planting your succulents.

4. Begin planting, starting at the bottom of the pallet and ending at the top. Make sure soil is firmly packed in each layer as you move up. Add more soil as needed so that plants are tightly packed at the end.

5. Water your wall garden thoroughly and let it remain horizontal for 1 to 2 weeks to allow plants to take root. After 1 to 2 weeks, you can set it upright.

Note: Remember when you water to start at the top and water each subsequent section a little less, as your water will naturally seep through to the bottom-most plants.

Enjoy!

Plastic bottles pile up as mountains of waste

The biggest growth in bottled beverages isn't beer or soft drinks or juices. It's tasteless, colorless and sugarless water. And while that can mean fewer cavities and slimmer waistlines, it irritates Patricia Franklin to no end.

The director of a nonprofit group that promotes recycling, she spends her workday thinking about the bottles, cans and other container waste that most Americans take for granted.

The boom in plastic water bottles has her especially frazzled because while the recycling rate is extremely low, the demand from recyclers is actually quite high.

Franklin, who runs the Container Recycling Institute, doesn't blame individuals as much as what she feels is a recycling system that hasn't kept up with consumption patterns — especially when it comes to water.

Bottled water is the single largest growth area among all beverages, that includes alcohol, juices and soft drinks. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over the last decade, from 10.5 gallons in 1993 to 22.6 in 2003, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation.

The growth has been even more impressive in terms of water bottles sold: from 3.3 billion in 1997 to 15 billion in 2002.

But most bottled water is consumed away from home, usually at a park, in an office or even while driving — areas where there's usually no recycling.

"The opportunities for recycling outside the home are minimal," Franklin says, "and therein lies the problem."

Bottles by the numbers
Only about 12 percent of "custom" plastic bottles, a category dominated by water, were recycled in 2003, according to industry consultant R.W. Beck, Inc. That's 40 million bottles a day that went into the trash or became litter. In contrast, the recycling rate for plastic soft drink bottles is around 30 percent.

The low water bottle recycling rate also impacts the overall recycling rate of all recyclable plastic containers. That's fallen from 53 percent in 1994 to 19 percent in 2003.

Plastics should be recycled so that less petroleum — a finite commodity — is consumed, Franklin says."The environmental impacts are in the drilling of the oil," she adds, noting that burning fossil fuel also releases gases that many scientists tie to global warming.

A second reason for recycling, Franklin says, is the litter factor. While plastic water bottles are not a significant percentage of overall waste, the empties are certainly all around us visually.

Thirdly, she says, is the fact that the domestic plastics recycling industry faces a shortage because so much is being exported to China for recycling there. That shortage has also led to fears that some companies will go bankrupt.

"There is a means to reclaim these bottles and use them to make new bottles and other products at home," Franklin says, "but they (recyclers) simply can't get enough of the containers to do it."

Strategies The Container Recycling Institute thinks a nationwide bottle deposit law would create the incentive to recycle, especially when it comes to plastic bottles, and ease the burden on taxpayers, who pay for cleaning up litter.

The purpose - where I start - is the idea of use. It is not recycling, it's reuse.
Issey Miyake