Let me tell you a few of my favorite things about pallets…

They make for a good ole DIY project. And I love me a good DIY project.
They are FREE! (Of course, you might have to search a bit to find them for free or in decent condition to use for your project.)
They have a certain rustic appeal about them, which aligns beautifully with my country-style home décor.
There is no shortage of Pinspiration for pallet projects.
You can make so many things out of just a few pallets. You’ll find that with this particular project, we were able to make three different planter boxes and a small table for our deck out of just about 2½ pallets.

If you’ve been reading Country Wife Chronicles for awhile, you are probably getting familiar with my country-rustic fixation. I tend to pull that flair over into the blogosphere when creating various design elements for CWC. In fact, that country-esque style has become sort of an identifier for the Country Wife Chronicles brand.

If you check out CWC on Pinterest, you’ll find boards like “Country Crafting,” “Country Home,” “Pallet Projects,” and “Rustic Holidays.”

And if you peruse the CWC Instagram page, you’ll discover images with barnwood frames and backgrounds, a DIY antique moulding coatrack, and of course, these pallet herb planters I’m sharing with you today!

One of the best things about working with pallets is that you can just keep coming up with projects to do with these freebies. We picked up 2-3 pallets from a local hardware store and were able to complete 2 herb planter boxes for our deck, 1 square planter box, and 1 rustic deck table out of the wood.

Have I ever told you that Pinterest is my happy place? I love it. It might be an addiction, if I’m being honest with myself. I love to search Pinterest for all things. Literally, all things.

But especially pallet projects. It is pallet project heaven. It is DIY overload.

Now, when it is all said and done these particular pallet planters came from a mash-up of ideas from other blogs on the internet. I guess I sort of treat my DIY project ideas like I do my recipes.

Here are a few of the blog posts I was checking out for inspiration for these DIY Pallet Planters:

And here are a few YouTube videos Wildland Man and I watched before crafting our own version of DIY Pallet Planters.

“3 Minute Pallet Wood Garden Planter Box That you Can Build” by Chad Schimmel
“Building a Pallet Planter” by Valhalla Woodworks
“How to Build a Planter Box” by Cottage Life DIY

Ok, so now that you are officially inspired to get started on a pallet planter project of your own, let’s start with the basics: the pallets.

Where can you find free pallets? My first suggestion is to check with hardware stores, both local, small-town stores and big box stores. They may not all offer free ones, or you may have to choose from damaged pallets they plan to discard, but all it takes is a few phone calls to find where to go.

If you aren’t having any luck with hardware stores, I suggest simply asking around. It wasn’t long after we were working on these pallet planters that one of our neighbors mentioned that he had access to pallets if we ever wanted some more in the future.

Once we found a location in which to get pallets, I did a little homework online to see what we should be looking for when selecting a pallet for this type of project. Here are some links to the info I found online:

Now, keep in mind, these pallet planters would all be outdoors, but some would be used to grow herbs we’d be eating. You really just need to read up on pallet lingo and decide what standards to set based on the project you are completing.

DIY Pallet Planters

Step one is to disassemble the pallets. I’ll be honest, I did not partake in this mission. This was all Wildland Man. But I did look up some tips for him before putting him to task. Here’s what I found online:

And here’s a great video I found too, entertaining and informative!

“How to Dismantle a Pallet. The EASY Way! Two Great Techniques” by D.I.Y. for Knuckleheads

Once you have your pallets dismantled, go ahead and gather up the rest of the supplies you’ll need to master this project.

Materials List

Disassembling the Pallet

Hammer & Crowbar
Or Reciprocating Saw

Building the Planters

Tape Measure
Hand Saw or Circular Saw
Screwdriver and/or Hammer
Screws and/or Nails

Filling the Planters

Landscaping Fabric or Weed Barrier
Soil
Herbs/Flowers

The next step is to measure and cut your ready-to-use pallet wood to the desired length for your particular project needs. We were placing these on the railing of our stairs heading up to the deck, so we needed them to fit within a certain length for our space.

Disclaimer: The point of sharing this pallet project with you is to get you inspired to DIY your own pallet creation for the garden. I’m not including measurements or specifics here, because half the fun of a project like this is customizing it to your own needs. My apologies if you were looking for a blueprint for pallet planters with this post.

Once you have all your parts cut to specification, it is time to piece them together to make the planters.

You may notice that the supports on one long side of our pallet planters are slightly taller than the others. This is on purpose so that we could more easily attach these planters to our deck railing.

Continue to screw together the parts for the planter and you’ll end up with something that looks a little like this.

Now that the planters are fully assembled, it is time to attach them to the deck railing. There are various methods to attach these to a deck, but we simply screwed the backside supports directly into the railing.

You might also notice that Wildland Man decided to use coated deck screws for this project. This is simply an attempt to limit rusting.

And here’s the finished product. They look great, don’t they?

I should mention, I didn’t bother with sanding or finishing them in any way. They are going to be fully exposed to the elements and will probably rot out on the bottom in a few years and need replaced anyway. Besides I like the weathered, rustic look the natural pallet has.

The final step is prepping these planter boxes for your herbs. You want to be sure to allow for proper drainage, so if needed, drill a few holes in the bottom.

Then add some fabric liner and fill ‘em up with soil so you can get some dirt under your nails and plant!

I have a confession to make, I’m not really much of a green thumb. In fact, I’ve been known to have a few plants die on my watch. But I’m learning, and these planter boxes with a few herbs in them are a great beginner’s gardening project.

Oh, one more touch. Herb markers. These little beauties were a creation by Wildland Man in honor of our 7^th wedding anniversary. We adhere to the traditional anniversary gifts by year, and year 7 was copper.

And wool. I also got wool socks.

Good man, that Wildland Man. Yes he is. I love him so.

So, here’s how they turned out after a few months of use. What do you think?

Breakdown of Cost for DIY Pallet Planters

Pallet Wood: FREE
Box of Exterior Screws: $9.37
Landscape Fabric/Weed Barrier: $9.98
1 large bag of Soil (ripped bag at a discount): $3.00
6 Herbs at $4 each: $24

Cost to Make 2 DIY Pallet Planters for the Deck

$9.37 (Free if you already have screws on hand!)

Total Cost to Make and Fill 2 DIY Pallet Planters for the Deck

$46.35 (includes landscape fabric, soil, and herbs)

Not too shabby. Makes this frugal heart happy.

And that is all she wrote. Except not. Because I have a few more posts coming on this subject…

Be sure to check out these upcoming posts at Country Wife Chronicles in the near future:

Remember when I mentioned what all we were able to make out of just a couple of pallets? In addition to these two deck planters, we made a large square planter and a small table for our deck. Next week, in DIY Pallet Planters {Part 2}, I’ll be sharing the deets on the large square planter we made out of this pallet wood too.

I sure hope you liked this post and it just so happened to inspire you to get outdoors this spring and garden. I would love to hear of any pallet projects you’ve had success with in your garden or landscaping.

Join in the conversation by commenting below:

Have you ever made anything for your garden or landscape with pallets? Do share!
Do you have any other suggestions for pallet projects to take on this spring?
How do you see yourself using pallets in your projects this year?

DIY Pallet Planters {Part 1}

DIY Pallet Planters