What are folks using as the framework of their raised beds? I'm trying some 2x10's rough hemlock pine.Be interesting on how long they last in zone 5 Western Massachusetts. Is the new copper treatment for pressure treated lumber any safer than the old arsnic pressure treated lumber?
Thanks Jerome
I did some research recently on this. Click on the following links:
Fito
we got our hands on a western red cedar (Thuja plicata) pallet and will try that
Tsuga? Not very long, I'd wager.
Cu or Zn bromate? By warnings posted on the label, no.
I used aged pressure treated wood with an aluminum liner between the wood and the soil. The sides are about 18" tall with 24" aluminum roofing flashing nailed all the way around the inside of the frame. Been using the same bed for about 20 years now and it's still in pretty good shape.
Bob
I haven't done any raised beds here because I have flood irrigation and I have slugs and putting anything, wood or rocks the garbage can.. on the ground usually shelters slugs. I have little bitty gray ones, and I have the big brown speckled ones.. they can get 8 - 12 inches long. However, my father had sandy ground, and no flood irrigation. He used scavenged wood. Whatever he could find. Pallets, plywood, discarded metal held in place with whatever he had to pound into the ground.
I realize not everyone wants to have a junky looking garden like that, but others...like my dad.. are only looking for cheap functionality.
You can use the boards on a pallet to make quite a few things. The ends are usually hardwood, some are pretty decent oak you could clean up and carve or somehow use to make furniture or art.. or when cleaned up, sawn up and used to make those glued together pieces of wood to make a bigger piece of wood.. like cutting boards.. but I think those are usually maple. But I digress... the wood can be truly useful if you're imaginative.
Granted it may not last forever, but a lot of folks end up moving things around in their gardens several times before they finally come up with a design they are finally happy with, and some of us are never happy and want to move things every 2 or 3 years anyway.
It's amazing how you can spot something down an alley while you've just flitted by it quickly. Your peripheral vision field will snatch the image and quickly beat it to your brain.. hey! wasn't that a stack of wood that looks like it was going to be tossed.. and you whip around the block and have a look-see and check with the owner and get permission to come back and get that.. if you aren't dressed/driving the right vehicle at that moment. There are always building sites that have scrap wood, people tearing out stuff and tossing things you can make cold frames, raised beds, or any number of things for cheap to free. I'm poor, and the daughter of parents who lived through the depression, and my dad hauled trash for years until the city went "franchise only" and put him out of business overnight. So, I have the salvage/save/recycle gene, and while I've learned not to save every cottage cheese carton now.. I still hate to let go of things I know are useful or will be. When I was growing 40 tomato plants and
15 or 20 peppers, and any other plant I set out, I saved toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, some cottage cheese cartons or yogurt cartons ..although I preferred things I wouldn't have to pick out of the garden later, to keep the cut worms away from transplants.So I vote for Recycled/salvaged/found objects for making raised beds. Also, what height? Dad made his high enough that he didn't have to stoop over any further than he was already bend at 90 to 93... about 3 to 4 feet tall between digging dirt out of the paths and putting it in the beds. Just try to find enough of one type of material if you need some degree of uniformity. ;-)
Janice
(snip)
Did you see the recent article about caffene being poison for slugs? Saving your old coffee and tea grounds, making a brew, and spraying the area to be protected is supposed to kill or run off the slugs. And it doesn't have to be a strong brew - as little as 2 per cent caffene is enough to kill them.
Bob
You have slugs a foot long?? In Boise?? Sorry if I sound incredulous, but I've never seen a slug over an inch long, even when my dad put in a new sprinkler system and watered almost constantly, and before that, I'd never seen a slug in Idaho.
I don't know about a foot, but we get them several inches long in NC.
According to the article a cup of instant coffee contains about 0.5% caffeine, brewed coffee has more but as little as 0.1% will deter 1/4 slugs from feeding.
I've been throwing my grounds in the compost bin. We have a nasty slug problem on the back deck, maybe I'll start throwing the grounds on the ground and see if it deters the nasty little beasts.
Some of the articles mention that plants are affected by caffeine just as people are so too much caffeine can cause harm to your plants.
I use old scafolding planks from a construction site, they stand up t all weathers and I`ve never noticed a problem with toxicity :
- YT209 Say it with Flowers,,,Give her a Triffid :
----------------------------------------------------------------------- posted via
If you'll search the archives of this newsgroup you'll see that I've been advocating / vigorously defending this for quite some time. Moreover, I have referenced the U of H study all along. The article you guys are linking to is hardly new information.
My technique has been to sprinkle FRESH grounds on the soil surface after signs of slugs (either damage or trails ... there are two photos of trails on my gardening website) is spotted. Use of fresh grounds is not mentioned in the U of H report. Their study focused on spraying amphibians with carefully calibrated solutions. My study did not care what the precise dose was, only what the practical application parameters might be.
I only have to do this once a year. I never see signs of slugs afterward ... not in the same season, anyway. I use about 1 pound, or slightly more, per 100 sq. ft. evenly broadcast on the soil surface (do not work into the soil) in the evening. After nightfall, the slugs come out to feed and are never seen again.
I believe I am getting about 100% kill off and that the following seasons slugs are immigrants from the public alley behind my garden. If I were getting less kill off than that, I would expect a resurgence in growth in the same year. Moreover, I would expect the technique to quit working as caffeine-tolerant slugs bred with each other. So far, it continues to be reliable. This is my third year of using this technique.
I have taken a lot of vary public flack about this and most certainly DID publish my findings -- right here -- so I am not getting a warm fuzzy feeling right now at seeing this gussied up report.
That link is about two years behind this newsgroup and nearly three years behind ME.
Bill
I'll let you do the research if you think it's worth reading.
I thought of doing the same after reading the article.
You use the word 'study', do you mean under controlled circumstances with reproducable results? Why don't you post it on your website? Then it's handy for anyone to take a quick look.
My wife and I decided to try this after I mentioned the SCIAM article, especially around our deck which hosts battalions of slugs. We have had some success beating them back by sprinkling salt around the house and under the deck but that won't work in the garden since the salt would kill the vegetables.
That would be awesome. We have a serious slug problem.
I am anxious to try it. We are already saving our coffee grounds. I'm not sure though that slugs/caffeine are analogous to bacteria/antibiotics, but that would be an interesting part of the study.
You get a gold star.
-snip-
You being 'Anonymous' and all, that isn't as easy as you make it seem. I *think* this is probably you posting as "Bill( snipped-for-privacy@dont.use.com)" last year in Message-ID:
To which Paghat answered with a reasoned rebuttal of the whole coffee/slug debate & posted her website which cites follow up studies which disagree with UofH--
So lets see your study-- give us a message ID or at least what your email address was back in those days.
Jim
On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 10:46:49 GMT in , Jim Elbrecht graced the world with this thought:
it is if you search using his email address and the name of this newsgroup....
What was his email address 3 years ago when he did his study?
Chugga only goes back a few months-- snipped-for-privacy@dont.use.com seems to have been only Jan 2003. He only used a name- Bill Canaday - on Jan
13 2004.I can't seem to penetrate his tinfoil hat to find out who he was back then.
If you've broken the code maybe *you* could post a message ID to make it easy on anyone who cares. [my caring is obviously less than the amount of effort it would take to track Bill any further]
Jim
Nope, nothing going back a year.
Sorry I'm slow to answer, haven't managed to get to the groups this past week. Yup they're the brown speckled ones, they usually aren't stretched out that far, but some of them over the years have been that big. I've had them come in on the bottoms of the trash cans .. as they crawled up under there to hide.. I had a box turtle years ago who was clawing at the garbage can and couldn't understand why, until I tipped it up and saw the slug.. turtle didn't care once he saw it.
I went out another time after dark and there were two slugs "chasing" one another around on the side of the house.. some sort of 'courtship" I imagine, they weren't a foot long.. but it's not unusual to see them
6" and over. Just the occasional one now and then is in that foot range.. and I guess when they're lounging.There are lots of the little gray slugs here too, they would climb to the top of a 5' tall dahlia just to eat holes in the petals and down by dawn. That's why I'd like to find some kids that catch tadpoles and get them to catch lots of them that had just gotten all 4 of their legs and starting to hop out of the water and turn them loose in my yard. A bunch of fence swifts and some 5 line skinks to live on my shed and garden to eat the bugs. Alas I know no such children and all the places I used to catch them are more than likely some housing development now.
*sigh*Janice
If you were looking.... what would you be looking for?
susan, who w> JRYezierski wrote:
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