Garden material being used in the garden can be leached into the soil due to their natural makeup. If you have ever questioned which material you should use in your raised garden beds then this video is for you. We look at whether or not treated wood is toxic in a garden. If tires leech into the soil & water. Even why using old furniture being used in the garden maybe a bad idea…
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Ashley has had a passion for plants since she was a small child. In the long summers as a child, she would garden alongside her grandmother and it was then that she realized her love for greenery. With years of great studying, Ashley had begun her post-secondary education at the University of Saskatchewan.
At first, her second love, animals, was the career path she chose but while doing her undergrad she realized that her education would take her elsewhere. And with that, four years later she graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a bachelor’s degree in science and a major in Soil Science.
Some of Ashley’s interests are YouTube, in which she posts informative videos about plants and gardening. The focus of Ashley’s YouTube channel is to bring science to gardening in a way that is informative but also helpful to others learning to garden. She also talks about the importance of having your own garden and the joys of gardening indoors. Ashley continues to study plants in her free time and hopes to expand her YouTube channel as well as her reach to up-and-coming gardeners.
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43 Comments
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the tit;le isnt propper grammer , i know im speelling shit wrong bnut it should say may be not mabye you feel me
an ancient technique is to burn the surface of the wood to create a water resistant barrier
Ashley, what about concrete blocks, like used in house foundations? Mine are from dryer floors in grain bins so they have only seen hot air heated by natural gas or propane.
Treated lumber lined with tar paper works well.
I used untreated construction quality lumber to build my beds and have lots of newer recycled plastic pots. When you were talking about bricks I was thinking about the old school type clay ones and wondering if they would be safe. (like the kind they used to use for floors in barns)
💚💚
I have. A blueberry planted around my fence and there is as pressure treated wood on other side for the last 15 years and I was just about to separate my blueberries from the fence and remove pressure treated wood when I found your cideo.😅❤❤❤
So pressure treated wood back from 2005 is ok ?
WE ARE DOOMED!! LOL. My question to you is, "How long does it take for the leeching process to start and to what percentage of toxins are released?" The term leeching is just tossed around but never gives any direct information as to the how, why and what happens. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to just grow in the ground like our great grandparents who homesteaded this Country. So we are required to create a new growing medium/method to somehow supplement what we are able to get from the grocery store. So like everything we don life, we play "Russian Roulette."
google "is ____ toxic?" and work out the entire planet is against you…
(food packaging, perfumes, dairy etc.)
Great video as always. I'm curious about pallets and terracotta pots.
Fr wood use Tamarack (Larch) or other resin heavy natural wood
I use untreated cedar fence pickets.
Have you ever noticed that you never see older people, grown ups, pissing and moaning about plastics and treated lumber and toxins in their system and all that bull$hit it's only the kids who think they're going to live forever
we had the 'great' idea to use old, dead freezers for raised beds. we have been collecting them for a while now. all the guts and cooling units have been removed. now i am afraid of the metal used!! even tho they are refrigerators, i certainly wouldnt call them 'food safe'. sigh. i am pushing 70and cant crouch down, so thought we were 'smart'. now what? i cant afford to buy anything can you advise?
Hmm, it sounds like the copper oxide in the treated wood might actually lead to stronger plants? Copper compounds used to be available in a paint to use on the insides of containers to cause chemical root pruning and encourage better root systems for soon-to-be-transplanted plants. I think I read a paper from the 60s to 80s about the US Forest Service planting seedlings in copper tubes for the same effect.
Here in gopher land we use a lot of galvanized hardware cloth for gopher cages (fruit trees) and lining alll raised beds (veg)…. Is the galvanizing process something that we should be concerned about for edibles??
Tires are leeching toxic chemicals such as inflammables. Every company hast enlisted different chemicals.They are a biohazard as you say. Some paint the tires colorful….
Great info. Thank you. As a side note silicon dioxide is commonly called sand or silica, and if fused, glass. Not dangerous, and in any soil too.
Use logs for garden beds looks neat and you don't have to worry as much about toxic chemicals or harmful compositions.
What about pond liner?
I have a huge silver maple tree that I've burned out the center of, leaving a 2 foot deep pit, with a couple of steps. the width of the pit is a few inches more than a meter circular. I could easily fit a 1 meter wide burn ring inside it. I'm thinking of leaving the charred surfaces as they are, and adding a mix of top soil and compost to make a planter of it. What's your thoughts? I'm in Columbus Ohio, USA; zone 6A. I'm thinking with all the carbon in the charred maple wood, the composting process should go into high gear. Am I right? I'd like it to be ready to plant in spring (May 1st is my Average Last Frost Estimated Date)
Crap mine is made out of brick I wish there was more info on it
ACQ lumber was invented to take the place of very toxic CCA (chlorinated copper arsenate) lumber. If you confuse nasty CCA for mostly harmless ACQ, you might not like the outcome.
Please don't change as you enter your "hot girl" arch…
I looked into it briefly before putting wood borders and trellis around my beds. Some gardeners advised against using treated lumber in the garden and even dissuaded me from using red ceder and redwood as they may repel pollinators. I don’t have raised beds, I surrounded my beds with 1”x6” and 1”x4” oak boards I salvaged from pallets. Seems to be fine. For the trellis I just used untreated framing studs ripped in half to make 2×2’s. They rot in the ground and break off. Which saves me the trouble of performing the underwear test, and it’s feeding the microbes!🎉
Soo.. I’ve seen adds for driveways made out of shredded rubber “because it’s really durable, recycled, and it looks good”.
Probably not a good idea if you’re worried about leaching chemicals into the surrounding soil.
Or well water, as my well is only 45ft deep.
A really cool trick to preserve ground contact wood is dumping used motor oil around them every couple years. It works by adding carbon to the soil thereby increasing the carbon nitrogen ratio to a point the microbes are nitrogen starved and can't eat the wood. I have a small spot 4×4 Ive been dumping 10 quarts of motor oil a year and adding 4 lbs of urea. It heats up like a compost pile when I spade it. Rich black soil.
I was considering using old brick to refurb my garden beds from a house that was torn or fell down. I have wooded property, and this house site doesn't show up on any plat maps that I can find so I'll estimate that the bricks are 75-100 yrs old or greater. Do you or the community have any opinion on using old bricks in the garden?
Hey Ashley/ GIC crew, I inherited a fiberglass bed (it's large and free!) with a crack in it. Any chance that's problematic for food growing? I plan on patching it
I have a bunch of giant poplar trees thats nearing the end of their lives. I mill them into 2" slabs and build my beds out of them. They'll decompose and return to the soil over the years. Then I mill another tree. Safe and very cost effective, but requires a couple trees and a sawmill 😂.
Great topic, thanks for filling us in! My friend wanted to repurpose some construction material for a raised garden bed and asked me if it could be done. I unfortunately had to discourage her from using the material because it was a recycled plastic (not "food safe") that would be in full sun. I hate wasting material but I had to be honest that I wouldn't recommend it for the family veggie garden. Flowerbeds ok!
Why not grow in the ground I watched documentary on Centerians in Japan every 100 year old person had a garden in the ground
I've seen lots of farm channels in Africa and Jamaica use old tires, hundreds of them. These farms claim to be organic. sigh
I am making my own lechuza pon. What ratio of osmocote do i add please? I know it has nothing to do with this video, sorry! Thanks
Took a qiick scroll and didnt see a similar comment but anyone know if scrap metal roofing is safe?? Should i be putting the cpated side on the inside of the beds pr are they both technically coated? If not those something I can coat with for safety? Have a roofing place literally down the toad and we wete going to see if we could build an extra large U shaped bed put of those and lumber for next year.
❤Thank you for all your videos! You are helping me grow my wildlife garden. I have garden bunnies now 🥰
With the analysis that we can do these days…has there been any studies that show the absorption that takes place in the plant?
Artificial Lumber and Plastic Wood
Hi! Is there somewhere in Sask that tests home garden soils for toxins or PFAs for example? I did not think enough about where I was getting my dirt from and now I’m stressed about it…
Hey Dear
I saw your videos and was impressed by the quality of your content. However, after analysis, I noticed there needs to be improvement for getting more views and subscribers. You are working hard but the main motive to reach an exact audience is not fulfilled. You are working for your audience if the video can't reach them. That's a waste of your energy and time also. I will show the problem in your video and share how to fix it.
Only say ‘yes’ if you want to grow your channel.
As a disabled gardener has been working in recycled food safe buckets from a local dairy I'd like to point out a danger not often disused, as they get solarized they get brittle ! I took a fall down the stairs, bad enough, but I fell through a couple buckets and got very badly lacerated as they came apart in shards, and most of those original buckets can't be easily moved since pieces break off as we try and lift them. Would not recommend!