That's what I wanted to hear.... heh. Thanks so much. I'll just leave it alone.

Plastics are fairly safe for pond liners, composters, and raised beds.
Though treated wood is also used for raised beds, I think putting
plastic on the soil side would be a good idea. It would reduce soil
contact with the wood increasing it's life and keep compounds from
the wood out of the soil. You see I would worry more about adding
stuff to the soil that is known to kill soil bacteria. But it probably
isn't a big deal either way.

Here's another idea, you could use TAR! Hey, it's safe enough for
our roads right?

There ain't nothing absolutely safe these days...

I saw the green stuff in Home Depot a couple of weeks ago.

Around here, the ACQ treated wood looks like the old CCA stuff, both are green to light green. I remember when the CCA stuff was new, a great improvement over using pentachloraphenol to treat wood, and guaranteed through long studies to have the arsenic tightly and permanently chemically bound up in the product. I worked for an organization that needed to approve use of the product, and some of us were apprehensive about it. Wonder what we will think of ACQ in 30 years??

Paint it. There is a .pdf floating around from some government lab or something and they painted some, left some plain. Then they sprayed it with water and tested that. The painted had no residue and i think even the non painted had very little.

I really wouldn't worry about it that much. First it has to leach, then your plants have to take it up and even then, the fruit usually doesn't take it up, isn't in more the leaves and stems? Who knows. Just don't cut the stuff with a circular saw without some protection. Thats when the stuff gets nasty (and when burning).

I'm building my beds this weekend. The looks of the raised bed looks so nice, and my neighbors will be more happy and less likely to eat me, my wife and my child.

So, what exactly are you using to construct the sides of your garden beds? I have quite a few 1 x 6" untreated redwood fencing left over from when the side fence was made. I may use that for the next raised beds.

We don't use anything for retaining walls, just let the weeds grow over the winter and mulch them down in the spring. We did learn to build them far enough apart to get the brush-hog down the paths to chop the pig weed and and make them just narrow enough to straddle with the tractor to spread the mulch.

A little mulch every year and eventually you'll need a ladder to pick your bush-beans!

Also, the stuff in the closest paths is bedding from the calf-barn I dragged out last fall to compost - the next job is to fork it.

BTW, the black and white, 4-legged thing in the foreground might be mulch soon!

I gotta find some dog seeds. That one looks ready to pick.

I've used untreated pine and recycled plastic boards, but what I use now are bricks. They look nice and I can get as many as I want for ten cents each from a friend who renovates homes.

A few wood treatment questions:

Is it ok to use a linseed-oil base stain for garden beds?

Would it be ok to use "raw linseed oil" to treat storage crates I'm building for root cellar storage? Any chance of this affecting food taste?

Would it be ok to use "raw linseed oil" to treat a solar food dehydrator I'm using, or will this also get into the food?

We used "raw" linseed oil on some parts of our solar food dryer, deciding that it was the least toxic choice at the time. Not sure if I would find a better choice now, with the internet and all which would make searching for alternatives easier. It might help a bit on raised bed material, but we just use old junk boards that we find, figure we can replace them in a few years if they rot too much. In our root cellar, we have been using a bunch of old peach crates (made of totally untreated wood) for years, some of them for over 30 years, with no problem. Once in awhile we might break a slat in one, but haven't had any rotting problems. The root cellar is humid, not wet.

A nearby recently completed home construction site had a pile of left over untreated framing wood including some very slightly wowed 8' 2 x 6's. I asked the general contractor if I could pick from that pile and he said, 'go ahead'. So my wife and I carried a few home along with an 8' 4 x 4. We'll be using that wood for our new vegetable bed. The total cost should be very low and if I stain the outside and line it like Monte suggested it'll be about a foot tall and still look very nice.

I'm weighing in a bit late with this. In college, I took an environmental engineering class while getting my Geology degree. Just about any synthetic organic molecule or anything made from hydrocarbons (plastic, etc) will cause cancer or birth defects at some varying rate. Some are definitely scarier than others.

I thought long and hard about what to make my raised beds out of, and eventually decided on cinder blocks, primarily due to industrial additives in all the other material choices. So for me, it's either concrete or stone for raised bed walls.

From what I've read online, boiled linseed oil is okay for the inside surface of raised beds. The internet says raw linseed oil takes too long to try. I don't know what else goes into stains but since I'm only concerned with preservation, not look, I am just using the oil as is.

Home depot sells the landscaping timber ($4 ea) that is fairly rough looking, and 8-foot long... using 8 of them (one on top the other and corner posts-probably 4x4s) can make a 64-sqFt bed for about $40 give or take the deck screws.

I was thinking having two 40'x8' beds for the Tomato/Asparagus guild:

TOTAL Tomato/Asparagus guild = 640 sqFt
10 tomato plants x 20 sqFt = 200 sqFt
60 asparagus plants x 3 sqFt = 180 sqFt
MISC companions (Basil, carrots, hot peppers etc) = 260 sq Ft

That would require 24 8' landscaping lumber costing $96 for EACH bed just for the that part of the cost.... more for 4x4s & deck screws.

How does that arrangement sound?

How do you reach into an 8' wide raised bed without stepping on the soil? I have trouble reaching into my 4' wide beds. But then, I'm pretty old. LOL

Good question... I WILL step when needed but on a few flat wide stones... ie SOME stooping might be needed but I do have long arms so still mostly working around the edge of the raised bed...

I guess the answer is to make beds that are no more than four to five feet wide. They should still maintain enough of the beneficial canopy effect at that size (if you're planting in a hexagonal pattern without using the space between rows rubbish). Another approach would be the keyhole edging beloved of forest gardeners. I'm a bit dubious about this though for annual plants. Another possible solution would be to place down some kind of board in order to minimise compaction, but this depends on what is or isn't growing in that part of the bed at the time.

I have a bunch of 4x4 boxes. I really wish instead of 5 4x4 boxes with 2ft paths between them I had a 26'x4' box. I can easily reach to the middle of the boxes from any side so the 4' wide measurement works well.

I built mine using 1x6 cedar fence planks and cedar 2x2's in the corners. 3 years later I needed to add a couple of screws where they've pulled through on one of the boxes. I had been prying against it though so I can't blame the boards for failing.

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