Every twelvemonth , as the spring and summer garden crop swing into full appurtenance – the robbing of our kitchen equipment start !
We start off using a few of our large colander bowl to pick dinero picnic pea and cucumbers – and before you recognize it – we have used every pot , pan and container we can find in the kitchen to hold the growing harvest .
gratuitous to say , it makes dinner party cooking a little tricky when your favorite pans are hold tomato and pepper on your back porch !
With the added pressure in the coming yr of apples , cherry and grapes to be harvested from the freshly planted yield trees and vineyard area – we thought it was clip to come up to the trouble by creating a cache of our own harvest home crates from scrap lumber and pallet forest .
The crates are secure , easy to make – and best of all – cheap to create ! Even better , besides holding the fruits of your garden – they make gravid gift crateful if you give any of your home - grown harvest aside . We made a few before the holidays for a gift exchange – and the crate were as adult of a hit as the homemade mustard , salsa , and pizza pie sauce we put in them !
For safety of any food that may be placed in them – we apply only untreated timber or pallet wood when build ours .
Here is how we make them :
To make a basic crate , you need spline and 4 corner posts . you could make the crates without the corner posts – but if you plan to put any type of system of weights in the crate – you will require to use them .
The crates we made here are 18”L x 9”W x 6”H. These seem to be an idealistic size for us , but you may conform your crate sizing as involve simply by create longer or unforesightful spline . For our crates , we needed a total of ( 4 ) 6″ posts , ( 11 ) 18″ long slats , and ( 6 ) 9″ slats .
If you are using scrap 2 x 4 ’s , you’re able to make your strips by set your fencing templet to ½ ” and running the 2 x 4 ’s savourless through the blade . With a distinctive 2 x 4 ( which really measure 3 ½ ” astray ) , you’re able to usually get six to seven slats out of each piece , depending how deep your blade is . A single 5′ piece of timber can make a crate . you’re able to also of course , use smaller fight pieces that are tenacious enough to make the slats .
Pallet Grant Wood works great for clear spline as well . Some of the abstemious weight pallets habituate ½ rough - sawn lumber for the top circuit board . For these – we just cut the boards into 1 ¾ ” wide strips and have a near dateless supply of pieces to make crates with .
Assembly is fairly mere . We take off by fastening the 18″ side together first . We spaced out three of our 18″ strip to the last of two posts , and then used a staple torpedo and a little gum to seize .
We repeated the footprint for the other side , and then attached the 9″ ends to produce the crateful rectangle . By staple into the corner posts – the crate is much strong .
To finish it off , we spaced 5 slip along the bottom . We stapled the two sides first – putting a dyad of staple fiber into the bottom of the recession posts . For the 3 slats in the heart – we paste and stapled the slats into the side slat . With that – your crateful is finish !
We spent a petty sentence before - hand cutting out a heap of slats and corner posts – and once we aim to assembly – we were able to put the crates together in just a few minutes .
Now – all that is left is to repeat the outgrowth a few more time and we will have a nice stash of crateful to do by all of our harvest in the come years !
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Happy Gardening and Building – Jim and Mary !
