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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Raised bed lumber alternative

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  • From: Allan Balliett <igg AT igg.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Raised bed lumber alternative
  • Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 07:51:29 -0500

You might consider the decking made from recycled shopping bags and milk
cartons and reclaimed hardwood sawdust - the original one was called Trex
Lumber but now there are others available in the home improvement stores.
It does not break down like lumber. http://www.trex.com/

Personal experience: it warps.

How come nonoe of us know anything about the pressure treated wood the EPA allowed to replace the arsenic treated wood that none of us want to use? I asked LOWE's when I first heard that new stuff was happening. My first shock was that there was a couple of years allowed for transition. My 2nd was that Lowes no intention of carrying the new stuff until that date arrived. My 3rd is current: no one at any Lowes around here can answer questions about the 'new' stuff, even as simple as 'is this the EPA-approved stuff'? It's like the earlier stuff never existed and now there's this treated wood, that no one will vouch for. I lack the vocabularly to know what to ask for.

I do know this: organic certification is much more lax on pressure treated than I had imagined. For example, I believe that pressure treated posts (I assume the arsenic-type) are allowed outside of 30ft from a food producing bed, like in a fence line. I won't use the arsenic ones, ever, of course, but...did I mention that almost all the locust in this area has become useless due to a heartwood fungus? With the fungus, the wood is not longer rot proof.

-Allan Balliett
Shepherdstown, WV




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