Here's another gardening related cross post from the thread
Show Me Your Pallet Projects! Posted here for your consideration...
Pallet Wood Arch added to Raised Garden Bed
Dear Wife took over one of my raised garden beds and planted some bitter melon in it. I don't know the exact Asian name of the plant, but I think we call them bitter melons in English. They grow on a climbing vine like cucumbers. So, I need to add an arch to the that raised garden bed....
I salvaged some 6 foot long 2X4's from long pallets for the vertical supports, and used ~4 foot 2X4's on the top wood frame. Put everything together with screws. The arch stood by itself pretty good, and I could have left it as it was, but I decided to put one screw into the bed frame and support on the bottom as well. That made the arch rock solid and you could swing from it.
I had some leftover 2X4 inch fencing that I stapled on to the arch. I have a powered staple gun which I loaded up with long staples and just shot them into the wood. That will be plenty good to hold the wire, and if I ever want to remove the wire from the arch, all I need is a screwdriver and/or pliers to pull out the staples. Here is a closeup of the staples....
OK, these 9/16 inch Arrow 50 staples are nowhere near as strong as fence post staples, but I just shot a staple in about every 6 inches and that should be plenty strong for the trellis. Again, the idea is that I might want to take apart that arch someday and these staples will be much easier to remove than fence post staples.
Fence post staples, which you might use for building your chicken run, look like this...
I thought fence post staples would be overkill for a trellis. Also, Arrow staples are much cheaper and easier to shoot into the wood with my 18v powered stapler.
I was telling Dear Wife that I was going to trim the fence wire to be flush with the 2X4 vertical supports. But she asked me why I was going to trim the fencing because the plants don't care if some of the wire fence is hanging out over the supports. Thinking about it, it was easy for me to agree with not trimming the fencing, because, if I ever take down that arch, I still have the entire fencing wire to reuse instead of a shorter piece.
Picture of wire fencing overhanging the wood...
Also, the wire fence overhang just provides a bit more room for the bitter melons to climb up. That should be a good thing, I would think.
This was one of those pallet projects that I turned over and over in my head for a few weeks. I had considered ripping the 2X4's in half to make a lighter frame. I could have done that, but eventually I decided to use the full 2X4's for added strength. I had also consider ripping some wood to make slats for the plants to climb up on. However, since I was attempting to grow food, I thought the wire fencing would provide more sunshine as the plants grew. If I had used slats running up the supports, I was thinking that the slats would partially block the sun and that is not what I wanted. I had also considered a number of arch types, but eventually decided on the flat top as the easiest and perhaps the strongest with 2X4's as the frame. Basically, I had grand plans on different options and eventually decided on a much simpler, but stronger, build on this arch.
Would love to hear any comments or suggestions on improving this project. This was just my first attempt at making an arch for the raised bed and I'm open to any improvements.
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