Treated Wood

scrushing 9/13/2011, 8:10 am

Hi All,

I'm anxious to get my first square foot garden under way. I have some old 2 X 6's by the shed--treated wood, but they've been sitting out for a year. I know we're not supposed to use treated wood, but I've also heard that all the bad chemicals will leach out from rain within a season. Any comments about that? I'd love to use it and save the money of buying new wood. Thanks....Sarah

BackyardBirdGardner 9/13/2011, 8:49 am

Personally, I'd use it. Welcome aboard the forum!

It's more a personal thing. Some of us have stricter standards when it comes to chemicals. You may want to watch and wait until a few more answer.

Hope to see more of you around.

scrushing 9/13/2011, 9:10 am

Thanks BackyardBirdGardner!
I meant to title the post Treated Wood, not Treated All Smile

EDIT: thread title changed

boffer 9/13/2011, 11:19 am

Hi, and welcome to the forum. After you read all the research data available, there's still no clear cut answer. It's a personal decision. I'm in the minority: ALL my boxes are pressure treated; some are lined with plastic and some are not.

westie42 9/13/2011, 12:04 pm

I would not go out and buy pressure treated lumber here but you live where anything in the ground is subject to many kinds of deterioration problems. Line them with plastic and use them anyway. Just don’t brag a whole lot about what you did here beyond being frugal. The newer treating process is supposed to render the chemical content of the pressure treating process less potentially harmful. That year of leaching will have helped a lot.

1airdoc 9/13/2011, 4:46 pm

I'm sure other purists and more cautionary folks will disagree, but as a physician, I researched what I could find about the current processes of treating wood (as opposed to the old cyanide-based process), and I chose to build my SFG out of treated wood products without a liner. I found no evidence that any harmful products made it into the edible parts of plants in containers made from treated wood. Most of the warnings out there relate to the old process and to abundant caution awaiting long term (decades?) data on the new products.

floyd1440 9/14/2011, 11:35 am

After doing some research on pressure treated wood I found that the EPA had made some changes in 2003. Some of the chemicals are no longer in current pressure treated wood so I build by beds with the present PTW available.

Some suggest to line it with plastic and others say to let it weather for a few months prior to putting Mels' in. I just put it in but other believe you must put a layer of plastic between the wood and the mix as a barrier.

As long as I keep posting, things must be OK

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