Hear Ye!

Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Mary Fitzpatrick!

Mary Fitzpatrick (BusyBeeMary, #3232) has received a certificate of achievement in Make it Easy for earning an Intermediate Level Make It! Merit Badge.

“I have a few leftover pallets from building my composting bins. I was looking on Pinterest and saw a potting bench made from 2 pallets. I had four pallets and a HUGE garden and no working table out in the garden. It made perfect sense to me that I needed to make one for my garden. And since I am working on a fundraising event for the local animal shelter, I made one to donate to the auction part of the event.

First thing is to gently separate the boards. Patience is everything. Slow and steady is the name of the game, as most boards would be happy to split or break apart. Then I built the frame. It was quite easy. I did not use the 2x4s from the pallets, as they were in bad shape. I bought two …

2x4s for the base and frame. It only cost $5.00. I basically started with the sides—the back piece measured 60 inches high. Then about 34 inches up from the ground with a depth of 26 inches, I added the board that the table would rest on with a leg running down from that. It looked like a backwards h and a h.

Then I added the front and back boards to connect the back and front to the two sides. I took a piece of 2×4 and hammered them from the back leg to the front leg about 5 inches from the ground. This would become the bottom shelf base. I then added the table top boards and the bottom shelf base. I then put some pallet boards on the top part of the back of the bench and placed a board on the very top to create a shelf. I plan on adding hooks or fancy knobs to use as planting tool hangers. I stained it to keep it a little more weather resistant and help the wood last longer. This was a fun project. I enjoy the fact that I finally have a nice working surface in my garden and it was recycled wood from pallets. That makes it special.

I love this potting bench. It was a great way to recycle and a useful use of the wood that would otherwise just sit, decompose, or who knows what. It will come in extremely handy in my garden, next to my soon to be built greenhouse. I wish I had made one sooner… I have the idea to make another one just like it and put a sink built into the table so I can wash the vegetables or have a water source in my garden to use other than out of the hose. I will place it by my water source and I will hook a drain hose so that the water that goes into the sink and through it will water the garden. I grow a 1/4 acre of food and dragging all that produce from the garden into the house creates a big mess, so this will help a lot.”