WWYD? Raised garden beds in pressure treated wood or in-ground planting?

[melissel]

Or something else?

 

DH and I are making ourselves crazy with this decision. We're strongly considering raised beds, but I really don't want to use pressure treated wood to grow my otherwise organic vegetables. He says untreated wood will only last 2-3 years, then we'll have to face the expense of rebuilding again. We could also do in-ground planting, but that means sod removal and doesn't confer the benefits of the raised beds (far fewer weeds, no bunnies in our garden, etc.).

 

So I need some thoughts. WWYD? If you have experience with raised beds, did you use untreated wood? If you garden in the ground, are the weeds/bunnies obnoxious?

 

Please help us decide before the whole planting season is over! :lol:

 

TIA!

[Blueridge]

You can find beautiful composite plastic raised bed frames in gardening catalogs but they are expensive. You can use cedar boards and they last much longer. You can also use bricks or cinder blocks to form raised beds. I do know a gardener who just plants into the soil that has been raised up above the ground level and has no border at all other than straw pathways. Despite what you use, the bunnies will love it! :lol:

[*Jen*]

This from Ana White

 

http://ana-white.com/2010/05/hack-natural-rustic-cedar-raised-beds.html

 

The pressure treated wood isn't good for growing veggies and the cedar will last longer than untreated wood.

[Acorn]

We used untreated wood for 5 raised beds. Our soil is so compacted that we had to start with the raised bed. It was solid for about 4 years. Then some boards slowly started decaying on the bolted ends. Then some of the boards were loose at the ends but still intact enough to prop into place. It has been about 8 years since we built it and some boards are in place and others are gone but we have a nice mound of soil that holds its shape. We do have rabbit fencing around the whole garden enclosure.

 

I personally would not use treated wood.

 

As a side note, one of the decaying boards grew some "dead man's fingers" fungi. I thought it was awesome.

[Paintedlady]

We have several raised beds and used only untreated wood. We're on year 3 and no signs of rotting at all. I also wouldn't use treated wood to grow my food.

[hmvaughan4]

We used cedar. This will only be our second year of using them, but we love them!

[melissel]

Thank you everyone. I am :bigear::bigear::bigear: Ana White! *swoon* I doubt I'll find the deal she did, but I wonder if cedar fence posts in general are cheaper than cedar boards, hmmm...

 

We used cedar. This will only be our second year of using them, but we love them!

 

Do you have any idea how much building one of them cost you? We hadn't talked about cedar until just a little while ago, so DH didn't price it when he was at Home Depot today.

[Heidi]

The Vegetable Gardeners Bible by ? Smith is a must have. He does raised garden beds in ground (no wood). First you till, then mark out where you want the beds, then shovel out the pathways in between the beds and put that dirt onto the beds making the dirt extra deep. You can make any size bed you want and use them the same as raised bed. They will be gently sloping, but that just gives the roots more room to grow. For the paths you lay newspaper then mulch over that,

[*Jen*]

I know in my area that the almost 6 ft cedar fence planks are about $5 a piece. Not as cheap as she found them but still better than cedar boards.

[Happy]

I use 2x6 untreated wood, but I paint with a good exterior paint...because I want them to last longer and be PRETTY. lol I'm building a white French potager look...slowly but surely...

 

I'm on my third year with the first set and we've added two more this season.

 

Wood, paint, and compost/mulch/peat for two 4x8 boxes was about $125...give or take. I don't think I counted the trip through Sonic for the labor payment my son 'demanded.' ETA...this seems high...I probably bought plants, too....

 

I love raised beds because we have nasty black clay soil...plants in my inground garden used to drown when we had a heavy spring rain. The soil on the farm was a lovely sandy loam that I wish I could buy by the truckload. So inground or raised depends on your soil and drainage conditions.

 

And yes, bunnies, bugs, and weeds do find their way into any garden area...

Edited March 16, 2012 by Happy

[MamaSheep]

My understanding is that using pressure treated wood is a bad idea because toxic chemicals from the wood get into your soil and then into your veggies. And yes, you do get weeds and bunnies either way, but the weeds, at least, are easier to deal with. Some of the prettiest bed borders I've seen were made with vinyl fencing, just a short post with a pretty cap on each corner, and then rails in between. They can be pricey, though. We used landscaping blocks for ours, and they seem to be working ok.

[Unicorn.]

We made ours w/ cinder blocks!

[JumpyTheFrog]

If I had a bazillion dollars, I'd hire someone to make deep brick garden beds for me.

[runmiarun]

We made ours w/ cinder blocks!

 

We did that with our beds at our old house. I grew herbs in the holes of the freebies I was gifted from a construction site.

[lailasmum]

We have a mixture of treated gravel board beds, old scaffolding boards, old untreated wood covered in wood preservative, tractor tyres and dumpy bags full of soil. The treated wood has no sign of decay, the scaff board have totally fallen apart, the untreated but coated with preservative is fine so far after 3 years. The tractor tyres are great too. If I was doing them from scratch again I think I would use breeze blocks or brick.

[melissel]

Thank you for all your input everyone. DH and I are leaning toward the cedar, but we'll consider other alternatives if we need to. I appreciate all the help!

[Wabi Sabi]

Do you have any idea how much building one of them cost you? We hadn't talked about cedar until just a little while ago, so DH didn't price it when he was at Home Depot today.

 

Last spring I build 5 raised beds that are each 4X8. I used cedar 2X6s and spent roughly $300 on the lumber alone. Cedar isn't cheap!

[melissel]

Last spring I build 5 raised beds that are each 4X8. I used cedar 2X6s and spent roughly $300 on the lumber alone. Cedar isn't cheap!

 

Thank you, that's actually much less than I'd feared! There's a project page online that puts the cost of their 4x8 cedar bed at around $150, I think, so we were imagining $600-$700 on the beds we need. Around $300 is manageable, especially if we factor in the cost of of potentially having to build new beds in the next several (6-7) years if we use untreated wood.

 

OK, I'm really starting to feel better about this whole thing :001_smile: We're so looking forward to starting the garden, but we keep bumping into barriers (mainly because we didn't do our research thoroughly :blush:).

[boscopup]

We use the composite raised beds. This will be the third year for ours, and it looks great. DH is looking at Tractor Supply today, as he saw they have some cheaper ones, so we'll see what they look like.

 

I love my raised beds!!! They're much easier to keep weeded (I started with the Square Foot Gardening soil mixture, so no weeds the first year). The weeds we get now are easy to pull up, so not a big deal. My boys just weeded the garden yesterday, since I never got around to taking dead stuff out at the end of last year. :tongue_smilie:

 

For the rabbits, my DH got a roll of 2ft. fencing and stuck that around the bed. I can reach over it to get the plants (or move it to really get in there), but it keeps the critters out. It's a crude setup right now (just wrapped around the bed in a circle), but it works very well. I haven't had critters eat my garden since I put it up (except the bug type critters, of course).

 

Here's a pic:

 

[fairfarmhand]

no to pressure treated. They will leach hazardouc chemicals into the soil. I'd get brick or plastic. You can even get that cheap plastic border edging stuff that will do decently well.