Raised Vegetable Garden Beds | Safe Or Toxic? 

Thanks. Mine are 17 years and I’m facing the same issues.

I built my raised beds almost exactly as you did in this video except that I used sawmill untreated hardwood lumber. I also used the thick black plastic instead of the transparent plastic. I did run out of black before I finished the beds and had to use transparent for the last two beds and that was 7 years ago. Within 3 years after doing that the transparent plastic which looks just like yours completely crumbled. I had to replace it in both beds that had it. Now they all have the thick black plastic and the 8 beds that had black plastic originally still look as good as the new ones. The sun destroyed the transparent plastic. I have 11 beds total now and will only use the thick black plastic. It is no fun having to redo a big raised bed to replace the plastic. So far my sawmill untreated wood is doing great.

I like the corner brackets. Save space not putting in 4x4s. I had to dig out the corners and add 4x4 a few weeks after my build cuz they started to open. All good now but bracket are the way to go.

Not sure I get the moisture barrier idea. Also my beds sit on about 4 inches of gravel. Only where the wood contacts the soil. The insides are lined with galvanized metal. Hoping they outlive me. Well kind of. LOL.

I used farmer's plastic for a liner and ended up having a snail infestation, the snails would hide from the heat under the rail caps as well.

Some of our pressure treated beds were built over 25 years ago - they are the landscape timbers zipper stacked with rebar rods through them to hold everything together. Although they do have a lot of rot on the inside where it contacts the soil, the outside still looks really good/ And it all is still doing what it was meant to do - hold in the soil and allow us a place to sit while we garden - so I consider them to still be in working condition. When I recently had to tear some of them apart to put in a greenhouse, I was even able to reuse some of the lumber to build new beds. I also have some with the newer pressure treated chemicals that were built about 15 years ago. Some of them aren't fairing quite as well, but some are still looking great. We did get the lumber for these at two different places, so I think how they are doing might be more about the quality of the actual wood. In all those years, no one who's eaten produce from the garden has had any ill effects. I don't till the soil, so most of the leaching would remain pretty close to the edges anyway. I don't use plastic lining because it's extra money, I'd have to worry about not ripping it up when I do work near the edges, and then there is the whole micro-plastic issue anyway.

Interesting. Thanks. I didn’t know it was arsenic that kept it from rotting.

Hi, can you share the name of the wood you using and the plastic link. thank you!

Thank you. I have metal heavy duty steel siding I’m using to make my beds. Do you know of any type of paint I can use to possibly cover up or seal in any negative effects from potential paint that already exists.

What kind of plastic are you using? Is it food safe?

Aren't you just creating a moisturise area with the poly?