Recycling and Redoing

It’s growing season again and this weekend we spent it outside setting up and preparing. Believe it or not, when it comes to planting a garden, planning might be the most important part.

A few years ago, after we moved into the house, my first solo project was a table. I pulled a pallet apart, sanded it down and put it together in the shape of a table. The husband needed more surfaces to work on as the planting got more serious. It took me about a week.

I also used it to store more wood, as I pulled apart more pallets.

But during one of the storms, I pulled the top boards out to store them safely so they wouldn’t blow everywhere… and I’ve never found them. More than likely, I did find them but didn’t realize where they belonged and used them for something else. So the table stopped being a table and has been storing wood pieces ever since. Until now.

The husband needed a small planter for the lettuce. I, not wanting to build something from scratch again, grabbed this table, emptied it, reinforced it and turned it upside down. We save our glass jars and store them upside down so water won’t collect in them.

The husband already set up the irrigation system. Lettuces are very delicate.

Please notice the beehive in the back of the picture. We set up the super, as it is called. It’s another box, so the bees can store honey but not larvae.

Another project that I had done for the garden was the potting stand, complete with a sink. We used an old sink that one of our neighbors was getting rid off. But for the base of the stand we used a big table that we had found on the side of the road, reinforced with pallet wood. That day we also found an old crib, that we turned upside down and made it into a tractor for the chickens with some chicken wire and a water bottle.

These aren’t the best picture of the final results, but they are the only ones I have, and 2kicks looks adorable.

I’m not sure why there was a piece of glass on the tractor, but these pictures are a few years old, and I probably put it there for a very good reason. Also, that doggie’s name was Sophie…

After a few years of rain, storms and scorching hot sun, let’s just say that the potting table did not age well. Building a new table had been on my to-do list for the entire summer, but it was too hot outside.

Only the pallet wood that I had used to reinforce it survived.

Between the left over materials from the last hurricane and our bathroom remodeling, plus all the scrap wood that I keep around, I had enough to make a brand new potting stand.

This new table is bigger, taller, and has more storage and little hanging pots. I put in hooks for hanging tools, and it has two good spots to stand in, since the kid usually wants to be involved. It’s standing on concrete bricks so the bottoms won’t rot out too quickly, and then I buried the brick with dirt so it would look more natural. The two side panels that have the hanging pots used to be an herb dryer (that I had also built), but we hadn’t used it for that purpose in a few years, because we have a dehydrator. So I dismantled it and used the panels. At the end of the day, the new stand is stronger, steadier and cuter. It will work better and it will last a lot longer.

It took me less than a weekend to build the little planter and this table, even though four out of my five rechargable batteries decided not to charge anymore. And I didn’t have to go to the home improvement store once. For those of you who have ever worked on anything know, about fifteen minutes after you start working on something, you find out that you have to go to the store because you’re missing an important tool or component. That’s the worst!

Hashtag: feeling accomplished.