Railroad ties OK for a raised bed garden?

[eggrookie2010]

I used them. I have two 8 x 16 foot beds. My ground is tons of decomposed granite and I have a major gopher problem. I got all the ties for $5 each. (about 60% less than retail) They are very old and very dry. I lined the bottom of the bed with welded wire to keep gophers out and the sides with thick sheets of plastic so any creosote doesnt contact the dirt. I too have read yes use it and no way never use it...so I just took a stab at it. We cant post photos here can we?

 

[Shiloh Acres]

You can post photos, now that your post count is over 10. I'm just not very good at it, or I'd tell you how. I upload mine to photobucket then use a link in my post, which will show the photo.

 

[eggrookie2010]

Ok here is my garden today-it looks sad cause of grasshopper problems. I still dont know how to put photos on my page. Hm..

 

[KevsFarm]

You did a nice job with your raised bed Eggrookie..!

 

[ScottSD]

Nice job egg rookie!

I haven't had time to take a look at the ties yet.

If I decided to use them, I too was planning on lining the bed with plastic.

 

[Dawn419]

I'm glad that I found this post!

I am doing raised beds in our vegetable garden due to the fact that the foothills of the Ozark Mountains are totally rocky and there are several rather large tops of rocks at ground level that we don't even want to think about trying to dig them up to move them. To give you an idea of some of our rocks out here:

Our 2 raised garden beds are made from trees that we cut down when we cleared our garden area but I'm wanting /needing more beds and we were going to go with railroad ties and line the inside of them with plastic.

Back in April, we went to a Go Green festival up in Thayer, MO. and one of the ladies that we met there is making raised beds out of old pallets. I guess we'll go with that idea instead.

I'd also thought about using no sides on the raised beds but we have a lot of heavy down pours here and I'd spent more time than I care to keeping the sides hoed back up, if I even ever found that soil again as we don't have much in the way of level land here.

Thanks, everyone for your input!


Dawn

 

[Farmfresh]

If I was doing a big raised bed or several of them I would be looking for hedge (Osage orange) posts to build it out of. We sometimes see hedge posts for sale on Craigslist around here at fairly reasonable prices. Osage orange is almost as impervious to rot as redwood and cedar at a trash tree price.

 

[Farmfresh]

I'm glad that I found this post!

I am doing raised beds in our vegetable garden due to the fact that the foothills of the Ozark Mountains are totally rocky and there are several rather large tops of rocks at ground level that we don't even want to think about trying to dig them up to move them. To give you an idea of some of our rocks out here:

With the rocks available have you thought of doing a stone wall for your raised beds? You could use a slipform type of construction that basically uses a short form which you fill with alternating layers of stone and concrete. Slipstone Walls

 

[Dawn419]

With the rocks available have you thought of doing a stone wall for your raised beds? You could use a slipform type of construction that basically uses a short form which you fill with alternating layers of stone and concrete. Slipstone Walls

Thanks for the link FarmFresh!

We're planning on building our main house using our native rocks and slip-forming and I've been playing around a bit with experimenting on using smaller rocks for pathways. I have thought about using rock to make the walls for the beds but it's a bit more time-consuming than I have time for, right now, but I hope to get there, eventually. Most of my flower/herb beds are planed with the method of move a good sized rock, add amended soil, plant flower/herb.

We joke about being rock farmers because anytime it rains, we manage to grow a new crop of rocks! Not complaining, there's just so many things going on here right now that with this hot and dry weather there just aren't enough hours in a day.

Dawn

 

[Farmfresh]

We have a family lake cabin at Lake of the Ozarks. I KNOW about rock farming!

We had neighbors down there who would come to the Lake and spend their entire summer working and building. They built a huge gorgeous stone "sea" wall across the entire frontage of their property, stone walled patio, stone walled fish pond/live well and stone fireplace.

I am pretty sure it was all slipformed, but honestly that was when I was a kid and I spent more time fishing and swimming than I did watching the neighbors sweat.