Sometimes you’ve just gotta get by with whatever works. Our front yard garden area is steep, as I’ve mentioned before. We’re planning to install rock walls, but so far it’s not exactly working out as planned. Last year at this time, my husband was working away from home so I tried my (failed) straw bale retaining wall experiment. This year, he’s battling a back injury and he hasn’t been exactly thrilled about hoisting rocks around. So, I came up with Plan C. I’m sure you’ve all seen the images of the vertical pallet garden floating around the web, right? Well, why not expand on that idea and use those pallets to retain the soil in my garden? I’m always willing to try something new - especially if it’s not going to cost me anything to try it – so I picked up a few pallets and brought them home. (There was only a little eye rolling from other members of the family.) We dug trenches about 18″ deep where we wanted the walls to be and then set a pallet into the trench with the boards situated horizontally. We filled the trench up, making sure to pack soil between the pallet boards, as...
