Our ten dollar raised beds. Wait, what?

Yes, you heard me right. Our raised beds cost us just ten dollars each. Complete! Well, ok, we had to paint them, but that cost was minimal. So, where did we get these awesome garden beds for ten bucks? The salvage yard, of course.

It all started when I was browsing Craigslist for materials. You know, sometimes you can find salvageable wood, etc. Anyway, on a whim, I type garden beds into the search bar. Hey, you never know until you try,

So, up pops this ad for hinged pallet holders. The ad suggests using them as raised garden beds. Pallet holders keep pallets steady when they're shipped. Basically, the pallet holder consists of four 8 inch wide boards, hinged together into a rectangle.

These pallet holders are perfect as garden beds. They measure around 2x3. They don't involve any nailing or screwing. You just unfold them, fill them with soil and you're good to go. Amazing find! And since they're slightly smaller than conventional garden beds, I can reach all sides. 

They even stack!

As you can see from the drawing, we chose to paint ours white to match our house, since they were being placed in the front yard. But other than that and filling them, they were virtually no work at all.

Note: In the picture, they're not filled yet.

I have to stop here to give props to my daughter and grand-kids for helping me paint and also, to Gary for shoveling all that dirt from truck to beds. 4 truck loads worth!

Don't you love the cool pattern I laid them out in? We wanted some low and some high beds. And there's plenty of access space in between them. We haven't decided whether we'll use wood chips or gravel around them or just leave the grass and keep it trimmed.

Now all we need is for spring to arrive. Gary will be sowing seed in the back yard no-dig area while I work on Herb's garden and the raised beds. It's going to be a great gardening year!