New Tomato Area
 

Last summer the bucket tomatoes in the garden really suffered in all day full sun while the ones up at the house got some afternoon shade and did a lot better. So this summer I want to put the tomato buckets at the top of the garden in a bed that gets some afternoon shade. They'll be on pallets that will sit across the bed, not on the soil so as to keep fire ants out. Then if this experiment doesn't work out, the pallets will go and the bed can revert to being a regular bed again, just more narrow.

The pallets are 4' wide and so is the outside diameter of the bed so there's just a small edge for the pallets to sit on. Not enough. I decided to make the bed more narrow so that wooden pallets will sit firmly across the side boards with some overlap.

This morning I dug out a 1' strip down one side of the bed and then moved the two side boards in so now the bed is 3' across.

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/UxOr9V0.jpg[/IMG]

Digging, leveling and setting the two boards took at least an hour and a half. Adjust this, level that, measure across, peg the boards in place...lots of fiddling. But it's done other than cutting the end boards to size.

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/292oRyD.jpg[/IMG]

I decided to place a pallet on the bed to see how it fit. The first one didn’t because it had cut outs on the cross pieces to allow lifting forks to slide through. The cut outs were spaced so that if one side of the pallet rested on one of the bed's side boards, the other side board “fell in the hole” of the other cutout so the pallet tilted. A pallet with no cutouts fit perfectly. Now I just need to put some plastic down for weed control before putting all the pallets in place.

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/sfkPzgi.jpg[/IMG]

I forgot not all pallets are 4x4. The first one I tried wasn't so I couldn't just turn it. I now know I need to pay attention when selecting pallets that the 4’ side has no cut outs. There's always a lesson to be learned.