gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

Im about to build some raised beds for the spring planting season. Ive read that pressure treated lumber contains chemicals that can leech into your soil. is this true ? Anyone use cedar instead of pressure-treated pine ? Cedar is quite a bit more expensive.

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

There are definately issues with things like arsenic leeching out of the logs over time. Best to find a non treated alternative.

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

i realy dont think there is all that much to worry about i read in a worm
farming book about concerns for copper napthalate that turned out to be ill
founded.

but consider maybee you would be better going with some form of slowly
degrading wood anyway an a nutrient source for the garden.so what
if you have to replace it every 5 or 10 years?

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

All -

See link.

http://www.ct.gov/CAES/cwp/view.asp?a=2815&q=376678

I've just used plain old rock over the years.


scyth

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

They don't use arsenic in treated lumber anymore. They phased it out in 2002. That's why the "new" treated lumber isn't as good.

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

1inx12inx8ft cedar board lumber is $25/each at the local home depot. Would need 3 of these to make a single 4x8ft bed.

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

that seems very expensive but you would only have to grow 37.5 tomatoes to make back your $75 investment!

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

I am about to do same.
Planning 2-3 4x8 frames.
Do you think cinder blocks wood be cheaper?
Maybe run a 2x6x8 on top to kneel or sit.

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

one idea i had is to keep an eye out for scrap cedar fencing.

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/new...toryType=garde

http://www.google.com/search?q=press...x=&startPage=1

I buy or get for free used cinder block and put a 8x16 paver on top. The holes are used for a place to put the rocks that keep turning up.

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

coat the lumber with blackjack roof seal first.

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

Around here, the most common material used would be old railroad ties. They are large and heavy. They last for decades. And sometimes you get get tons of them (literally) for not much money.

Gregg

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

Railroad ties

Creosote.

Poisonous shit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creosote

scyth

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

The old CCA treated stuff was bad news.

I use the new stuff and I don't worry about it. I read all I could on the the new stuff, it seems to be ok.

If you do worry, build your beds, and line them with a heavy plastic.

(I'm not dead yet)

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

This is a technique I found for a non-toxic wood preservative. It's what I plan to use if I construct raised beds out of wood again (up 'til now I've just gone untreated)

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

1st off, several posters are correct that nowadays treated lumber does not leech toxins. In fact, you can get salt-water treated lumber but expect some fun keeping the lumber straight. The change was made sometime in the mid to late '90s and resulted in a combination of consternation and adulation.
2ndly, I'm confused that ImaCannin would decry treated lumber and then proceed to treat her lumber with chemicals from a can.

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

There is a method of cooking fish called "Planking" that involves cleaning and cutting the fish, and nailing it to a board, then standing the board right up next to a fire, which smokes the fish in a few hours. In this method pressure treated wood is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE for planking fish.

Personally I would extend this logic to my garden as well. However if you use certain untreated wood you are going to get rot inside of 20 years. So be really creative and find something INERT that you can use on top of your organic wood...or use Rocks. Cedar is nice quality.

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

1x material is probably a little light for the task. I would use a minimum of 2x material.

The bed constructed of 4x material shown in the post above is very nice!!

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

Absolutely. One inch will also tend to bow outwards. Been there, done that with plastic lumber.

Four inches looks almost wide enough to be comfortable to sit on as you do your planting and weeding. I'm not that old yet, but as I'm pushing 40 I'm realizing that I should plan for future comfort and physical limitations.

Any permanent raised bed I put in will have an area wide enough for my rump!

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

Hey, Lamentations:
I was in the same situation only last year. I wanted to use cedar boards for all the above reasons. I wanted at least 10" high boards. Unfortunately cedar only came in 8" or less. I did not want pressure treated lumber.

At Lowe's I purchased four 2" x 10" x 12' non-pressure treated boards for 4 or 5FRN apiece (I believe). Then I used two coats of linseed oil. In Delaware it took the linseed oil forever to dry (3 weeks total time for 2 coats). It worked well and the wood is weathering fine. I will be adding on another 12' x 12' section this year to me garden. 2" boards did not bow with the dirt, so I am pleased with that as well.

THe Great Ag

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

They don't make boards that wide, Ralleia. :biggrin: Just kidding.

The Great Ag

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

I'm not saying you are wrong about that. I'm not a biological chemist and I don't even play one on the internet. I wouldn't want somebody to coat my arms with creosote every day like they did in the rat studies. But we are talking about old railroad ties. Big and heavy and excellent for something like a raised garden bed. And they have already spent 20-30 years outside exposed to the elements. Anything that was going to leach out of them has pretty much happened. When I move them around, I never get anything on my hands but dirt or splinters.

I guess I've just been around too many things in my lifetime that were coated with creosote without seeing any bad effects. Some kind of pressure treated lumber that leaches arsenic? OK, I'll stay away from that.

And creosote is made from coal. Last time I checked, people dug coal out of the ground. I'm a lot more worried about exotic chemicals and poisons that are cooked up in factories than something that occurs naturally in the environment.

And I would _assume_ that plants wouldn't "pass on" any slight amount of creosote in the soil anyway. So if you add all those things together, it seems like a risk I'm willing to take. Old timbers that leached out 99% of their accessible creosote a decade ago, plants growing several inches away from them, and low levels of toxicity in the worst case. Physically applying it directly to the skin every day for weeks is quite a bit different than a few parts per million in the dirt where my tomatoes are growing! All my goat poop compost will kill the bad stuff anyway!

We all make our choices that we can live with personally. People living in the city take in far more contaminants in their daily air than I do living 54 miles from Tulsa. Or people that eat packaged foods with 20 different chemical ingredients. I'm willing to take my chances with a little creosote!

JMO!

Gregg

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

Go with cedar if available. Lasts a long, long time, and looks nice too.

Re: gardening - using pressure treated lumber for raised beds ?
 

There's a foundation liner called "platon" that can be used as a waterproof barrier between wood and earth. It's a bit pricey but it'll prevent mud from leaching out through the boards and retain moisture too.

Platon!