Heat treated wood is prolly fine... There are pallets and food boxes that have HT branded on them and I haven't found any chemicals in them... Other treated wood I would not use
I have to laugh at myself... Sometimes my brain is so single focused. I was at a urban garden home tour last week and we were discussing mulching.... This one guy used bark.... IM not a fan of bark except under fruit trees.... And I asked him why he didn't use hay or straw..... He said... Cuz I couldn't find organic and I didn't want the chemical inputs that you get..... My brain went 'well dang I never thought of that' now I'm going to check and see if organize aka unsprayed hay and straw change soil composition.... More soil tests.... I will let you know how it turns out.... This may be a onE year garden experiment EDIT: forgot to update this after soil tests. 5 years of wheat straw for mulch showed no residual pesticides. Immature stop worrying about the organic straw.
If you use untreated wood it would rot so fast down here or turn to Termite food in less than 2 seasons. I guess I'll just have to find out. It doesn't affect the plants growing, but, If I suddenly stop posting for a couple months, don't use pressure treated wood!
You will die, sooner or later. "Isn't pressure treated wood was unsafe to use for raised beds ?" Maybe, depends on so many variables the AG folks mostly gave up on that subject. The older (my definition is open to interpolation) pressure treated woods were certainly harmful to your health at some level. One of those pressure treated wood products was creosote a petrol chemical combination of various crude oil based sources. The other used a bit more deadly (my definition is open to interpolation) combination of chemicals. The now, most common, is dried and then treated. If it is dried after the treatment it is a bit more safe. Up to 30 years against rot. Then again some common chemicals come from sourced timbers that can kill you if taken in high percentage points (my definition is open to interpolation). So there you have it. Data is skimpy at best for the real world unless you are talking about freshly treated, not dried, not aged wood (my definition is open to interpolation) . So line with plastic and hope for the best. Arsenic Compounds The safety of pressure-treated wood for garden beds depends on what preservative was used to treat the wood. Wood treated with chromated copper arsenate or CCA can leach toxic arsenic into soil that may be taken up by the plants grown in that soil. CCA-treated wood should not be used for garden beds, says the Vermont Department of Health. CCA-treated wood has been restricted since 2004 to foundation construction only. Wood treated with creosote, a black, smelly coal tar derivative, also should not be used for raised beds because of toxic leaching. Copper-Based Preservative In 2013, most pressure-treated wood used copper-based compounds, including copper azole, or CA; alkaline copper quaternary, or ACA; and micronized copper quaternary, or MCQ. Copper is considered much less toxic than arsenic. Producers of wood treated with MCQ claim that their product won’t leach any copper into the environment and so is safe for all uses, including raised garden beds. If you are still concerned, experts at the University of California, Davis, suggest lining the interior walls of your raised bed frame with heavy plastic sheeting or using decay-resistant lumber such as redwood or cedar.
I have all my beds lined in 6 mil plastic with holes poked in the bottom to allow drainage. As I told my son, I'm more likely to die from friendly fire than anything else at this point!
In raised bed I would stay away from pressure treated lumber and railroad ties. We have several dwarf apple, peach and pie cherry trees, they are easy to harvest, prune, and take very little space. We get some weird weather here, warms up in February causing fruit trees to flower too early so we planted our trees on the north side of the house where it is the last to warm up.
Hey @vonslob how do those dwarf trees produce? I've been staring at them for two years in the Burgess catalog but you are the1st person I've heard mention them. Any down side? I'm not after a full blown orchard, just a few trees to provide some different fruits to put up every year.
This is a related topic... Kelthane. The only thing besides Lindane that will ever kill red spider mites. Both are still sold in Australia, but have not been available here for over 10 years. Buy it now auction on Ebay had 8 bottles of it, if you are looking for it... free shipping. NEW HI YIELD KELTHANE SPRAY 8 FL OZ INSECTICIDE MITES SPIDERS TOMATO RUSSET
I am really impressed with the yields, we have three dwarf pie cherry trees that yield aprox 5 gallons of cherries, the trees are a little over four feet. What I like about the dwarfs the most is the ability to cover them to protect against late frosts and birds when they ripen. The peach trees, five of them, gives us enough to put up 48 pints of preserves last year. The apples, four of them, are the least productive, yielded twenty dehydrator trays of apples. Now if I could find an apricot tree that is a dwarf, that would be something, we get apricots one out of three years because of late frosts. The peach trees are spaced four to five feet, the cherries the same. Some day I want to plant a couple of dozen of each so that I would have a mini-orchard Edit: I have not seen any problems with them yet, they are ten or so years old. If I was to do it again I would plant full size apple trees, very happy with the peach and cherry.
my sister and i went over what a pain drip is with emitters in a raised bed. She went with this type of system
Old post but in this area hay pastures that I use only apply balanced chemical fertilizers with seasonal testing. After all how in the world could you use only "organics" on a 500 acre hay field? Fuel cost alone would be prohibitive and if any want Organics in the hay field, well most already have that with the first cutting being Bush hogged and turned under, So you have those as the fella above making statements that forgo the fact that a first cutting has good quality in mind as the first cutting is considered trash and yet it has had about 4 months of rain and snow to remove wind blown insecticides as no one I know produce cattle grade hay with applied insectides. Know your source, talk to the producers on site,make friends that understand your needs. My hay Guy, actually a family run operation of about 3 generations, are folks that have day jobs and produce hay as a way to keep the family ranch in the family. Yes I pre order each spring for a given amount of cattle grade hay. The hay I purchase is pre sold with the agreement cost are the rated expenses, set even to delivery cost and with a standard profit. This all means that I am not screwed around and if a bad harvest happens we all know and share the hit. Yet no gouging happens as they know I am a steady customer and will continue with them. And I pay as the hay is delivered. I also know where they live and their Dogs names.