I bought some Big Name metal garden beds in 2023. They are already rusting even though the brand claims they are expected to last 20+ years. I reached out to a soil corrosion expert who said 20 years is kind of crazy, and then explained how corrosion happens in garden beds.
Some soils are more corrosive than others, wet & dry cycles do a lot of damage, and the type of fertilizers also play a role.
I'm hoping to gather some real data so I can post results to help other gardeners. If you have a few minutes, answer the questions below:
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What brand garden bed to you have? (Vego, Birdies, Generic, etc)
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What year did you buy them?
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Are they showing signs of rust? What stage based on the photo? Stage 4 (not shown) is rust that's gone all the way through, creating a hole.
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What state do you live in?
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Do you have a wet-dry cycle climate? (Like in the Midwest, where we have rain every 3 days or so).
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Do you know what type of soil you have? (Clay, Loam, Sandy, Silt, Sandy Loam, etc)
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Do you use liquid fertilizer?
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Have you used soil acidifiers (for growing blueberries or because your soil needed it, for example).
by AskTheFoodGeek
5 Comments
> **I reached out to a soil corrosion expert who said 20 years is kind of crazy,** and then explained how corrosion happens in garden beds.
So what did they say?
I don’t have metal garden beds precisely because I don’t want to deal with rust, but I’m treating for rust some metal cabinets that stayed outside (but relatively protected from the rain) and the only spots that were bubbling or rusty were the ones that already had the powder coating damaged, or where near a damaged spot.
Why don’t you say the brand? I have vego and no rust. I added some other soil so my local soil might not apply.
Wood also degrades. I’m in year 5 for my first three.
https://preview.redd.it/1y2hoz7u3ckg1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=48f42ef97dff6d8ed4acc8f9865610cd3f002268
1. The photo above is of my 11 Birdies beds. Elsewhere in my yard, I have a few of the small 2’ round Vego beds.
2. I bought my Birdies over the years, my oldest ones I think are maybe close to a decade? I want to say I bought my first ones from Gardeners Supply back when they carried the line before Epic Gardening started to import them.
3. No signs of rust. I’ve emptied them out and moved them around quite a bit! The photo above is from 2024 when we redid our back yard. We had to empty them out and move them and let them sit empty through the late winter/spring. They all look as good as the day I assembled them.
4. Oregon, zone 8b.
5. It rains here a fair amount! We get about 40” of rain a year. Summers tend to be dry-ish most years. We don’t cycle through that wet/dry cycle in the summer. More like steady rain from fall to spring with the random dry day, then dry in the summer.
6. I mostly didn’t fill them with native soil. Our soil is clay. Some of them have a bit of the native soil worked in but most of it isn’t not native soil. I don’t love clay.
7. I mostly add straw/loose dirt from the chicken run in the fall with a layer of leaves on top. In the spring, I throw on a layer of compost from my bins. When planting, I use some dry starter fertilizer and some alfalfa meal. Liquid fert is for my flowers in pots.
8. Nope.
My Vego beds are around 5-ish years old and I’m not as impressed. No sign of rusting. My impression is that they’re thinner than the Birdies.
Synthetic fertilizers will leave salt deposits for improved rusting.
I buy the cheapest off-brand metal beds off Amzn. I bought one in 2024 and three in 2025. Except for being dirty, they all still look like they did the day I put them together. Which is great, because I already have two more to install this year.