White untreated wood.

I've done my beds out of untreated wood and they are going on four years without a sign of rotting. 2" X 10" boards. Here's a pic from a few weeks ago. I hope I link this pic right.

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My vote for the best material ever to build my raised beds is what I've used successfully and as cheaply as possible for many years. It is 100% completely natural and is easily obtained. It lasts nearly forever and improves with minimal upkeep and is attractive to the eye in my way of thinking. This material also allows me to build beds that offer up to 10% more growing area than any other material in the same space.

It is my garden's native soil. I've built many raised beds in my lifetime without any sort of rigid sides. Most recently, the garden I started this year in Maine has 20 4'x15'beds, and longer ones around the 50'x80' garden area, all consisting of gently mounded soil, not a "side" in sight and no concerns about rotting, toxicity or cost.

Raised bed gardening is not synonymous with building walls to hold in the soil. Traditional raised bed gardening, as practiced for centuries in the French Intensive method, is based on constructing just such mounded beds of soil. (That method also involves double-digging and I will eventually do that to all my beds, but this year, the soil was loosened and raked from the paths to form the beds.) There are of examples of walled beds in history as some will no doubt point out, but most practitioners (farmers and gardeners) found that, unless it was necessary to retain soil or keep animals out, building walls was not an economical way to grow the most veggies in the smallest amount of space, the ultimate goal of the intensive methods.

There may be compelling reasons to build sides, such as to allow gardening on a steep slope where soil would wash away, or to reduce the amount of bending for an infirm person, but if no necessity exists, consider not buying any material and simply mounding the soil into free and more efficient planting beds.

Wayne

Emily, you should watch Craigslist and freecycle for free materials you can use for sides. Although you can just make raised mounds without sides, that doesn't work well for me for a variety of reasons. Read on and see if they might apply to you.

1) My land is on a very slight slope, and it rains a lot sometimes, so eventually soil wants to run downhill into the neighbor's yard. The sides keep my soil here.
2) I have enthusiastic weeds such as quack grass and creeping charlie by my gardens, and the sides make it a little harder for them to get into my gardens.
3) I use all free ingredients in my lasagna raised beds, and the old produce (such as peaches, apples, limes, and other round fruit) would roll away while I am piling up the layers of stuff. The leaves would also be more prone to blow away before I get the next layer on top of them. 4) Creating tall lasagna beds is easier than double or even single digging, at least with the kind of vegetation around my house.

Back to craigslist and freecycle --> Watch for people giving away boards, concrete blocks, bricks, plastic children's pools, etc. We build most of our raised beds out of old lumber. The first two were from random old lumber, one bed is actually an old waterbed frame I saw in a friend's burn pile, another is from machinery crating from another friend's place of business, another with boards my brother removed from around his former residence's play equipment. One is made of concrete bricks I got on freecycle. Then I have 3 of those flexible children's pools, I put holes around the side about an inch from the bottom for drainage. One was from freecycle, the other two I found in the trash.

In summary, be creative and FIND some materials, I can assure you they are out there. U.S. citizens are the most wasteful people in the world, use that to your advantage. Then fill the beds with leaves, old produce, manure, used coffee grounds, grass clippings, whatever you can come up with, again for free. Best darn gardens in the world.

Marcia

g'day emily,

i for one wouldn't use any treated timber, you could use cment blocks or even corrugated zincaluum roofing (over here some places make free standing bed surrounds from this ready to go, too easy hey?).

or until you find an ideal surround why not simply use straw/hay bales? see the pic's on our site we still haven't done anything about edging 2 years later as we simply can't afford anything, but the gardens are still well defined and aen' collapsing.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page