A couple weeks ago a friend sent me a photo of her new pallet garden, one in which she planted lettuce in nice neat little rows.  I always love seeing people get excited about gardening so I sent back a text saying I was happy for her that she got her garden planted. After I sent that text something started to gnaw at me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

As life goes, I got busy and forgot about the photo of her little pallet garden until I saw the pest control guy at work. That’s why her photo was gnawing at me.

You see, I have lunch with one of the quality control girls almost every day and the pest control guy would always stop in to speak with her about what pests were in the building. Spiders and ants are an issue in just about any building, but they can not be present in a manufacturing business that makes food. That’s why they hire a pest control guy.

It wasn’t until I saw the pest control guy again that one particular conversation popped up in my mind. The business that I worked at had quite a few sightings of spiders that week and the pest control guy had to eradicate them.  He said he’d spray all over and he’d be sure to get the ones like to hide in the pallets.

It took me a bit, but that’s why the simple photo of a pallet garden didn’t quite sit right with me. Not only was the pest control guy sitting on my mind, but tons of images also started flooding my mind. Images of other manufacturing facilities that I’ve visited where I’ve seen containers of chemicals and oils sit on pallets.

So I started researching just how pallets are made, whether are they safe, etc. A wonderful resource of information was here. There’s quite a bit of information to digest there, but if you scroll to the bottom you’ll find that they said:

“…avoid growing food on or near used pallet wood.”

The trend of growing food in pallets is probably not the safest thing for you to do. Most people don’t know where their pallet originated from, or what it was used for in its lifespan. Or what that pallet came in contact with like the pallets at my work where the pest control guy sprayed them with some sort of spider killer.

Pallets are not safe for growing food, period.