451-Raised Bed Garden Makeover: You Asked, I Answered

Hi, everybody. I'm Joe Lampold, the Joe behind Joe Gardner and welcome to the Joe Gardner show. Whenever we do a topic around raised beds or raised bed gardening, there's a lot of activity. There's a lot of questions. There's a lot of interest. And rightfully so, because there's a lot to know. And recently we have been getting extra interest in a project that I had found myself immersed in voluntarily, but not quite according to the plan that it was in my mind for when I was going to do this. And that was, and you might have heard about this or seen it on some of the post I've done recently on a raised bed makeover project. Now if you've been following me for any length of time, no doubt you have seen videos or pictures or episodes of growing a greener world where I am in my nice raised bed garden here on my farm in North Atlanta. It's 16 raised beds. The Garden Footprint is about 75 feet wide and 45 feet deep. And these big beautiful chunky cedar timbers. And when I installed those 14 years ago, it was gorgeous. And they're still gorgeous. But over time, time and rot have caught up with me. And because they were untreated, there's really nothing to preserve them other than the natural preservatives within the cedar itself. And it had served me well in 14 years is pretty much pushing the limit. And they were starting to rot. And I saw the writing on the wall around year number 10. Thanks for starting to give way. The corners were showing extreme where. And over the last three to four years, I knew that I was really just writing on borrowed time. And it was inevitable that at some point, I was going to need to make the decision on taking those beds out and then replacing them with something. Well, that time came recently in the last couple months. The beds were literally falling apart. And I knew I didn't have another year in them. I had gotten all I could out of them. And it was the termites combined with the heat and the humidity and the moist soil in contact with the wood. It all times from the ground and from the interior primarily. So naturally, something had to give. And the beds gave. And I wasn't done gardening. And I won't be ever done gardening. So I knew that I was just going to replace those beds. But the question, the first big question was, what was I going to replace them with? Was I going to stay with this beautiful, these beautiful six by six untreated cedar timber? Actually, probably so. If it was still affordable, actually, it wasn't even affordable when I did it 14 years ago. But since then, the price has tripled probably. And even I got a good deal on it back then. It was still beyond my means. But I made it work. So I knew that I just couldn't do that. And if I did do that, I would treat the inside with some preservatives, some organic preservative that would have, you know, allowed them to last much longer. It didn't anticipate the termites I should have. And I'm not sure the preservative would have had an impact on that. But we'll never know. But I knew that I couldn't go back with the cedar. And I also wasn't sure that any hardwood lumber for the amount that I needed and the sizes that I needed them in was going to be readily accessible. And even if I could get my hands on it, anything that would have been like that would have been really out of my limit for what I could afford to do. So I had to start looking for other options. And I have always had my eye out on other people's raised bed gardens. And there are many beautiful ones out there. But I have a preferred aesthetic for my garden. And as I've said, if you've seen my garden, it really fits in nicely with the overall look of the farm scene between the greenhouse and the barn and the house and all of that. It's just a natural, somewhat rustic look. And I love that. So I knew that going with something completely different wasn't going to work for me. So that would have been, you know, center blocks or just stones or a new modern style all metal raised bed with rounded corners. Actually, no corners, just kind of oval ish or whatever. That just in my mind wasn't going to work for me. And those are great options, very good options, nothing wrong with them. But just the personal aesthetic preference for me. So I needed to stick with wood. I wanted to stick with wood, but I didn't feel like I had to go with all wood as much as I love it. And there were some reasons why I ended up not going with all wood. In fact, I had seen some raised bed options recently, including a conversation I did on a podcast a few episodes back with Gardener Scott. And he is a great resource out of Colorado. And he trials and builds out all kinds of examples. So if you really wanted to go kick the tires on different types of beds and see what they look like or how they work, he's a great resource for that. He's got to tremendous YouTube channel. And he's a super nice guy and really knowledgeable. And I respect everything he does. And on the cover of his new book, which is what we were talking about, he had a picture of a garden that was not his, but the beds in the garden were very much what I had kind of been thinking about, very attractive, but it was a combination of wood and metal, corrugated galvanized steel metal on the panels. That resonated with me very much because it was a nice compromise. I didn't really hadn't had a chance of price that style out yet. But I have two friends that were instrumental in helping me decide and build the new raised beds. And one of them was my friend, David Park. He had been watching my progress. He'd been following me for a long time. He's been down to my farm to buy some seedlings in this April time. But anyway, he's got a real background in design with software, CAD design specifically. But anyway, out of the blue, I got an email one day and he had heard me on a podcast, hey, I'm getting ready to build some new raised beds. Not sure what I'm going to do yet, but it's happening. Well, shortly after that, this email arrives with a realistic mockup of me and my garden with new beds. And the new beds that he put into my garden were the ones I just was talking about with you, which was the combination of the metal and the wood framing. And I have to tell you to see the mockup in my real garden, kind of like AI-ish. With me in the picture too, I'm a visual learner. And so when I see something visually, I react much faster because I get a sense of it. I see it. And he allowed me to see it in this mockup. And I was blown away. And I was immediately sold because I'd already kind of like that look. And then when I saw it in my garden, I saw how it fit. And I said, yeah, let's do that. So he and I stayed in touch and long story short, that was what we decided on. David refined the design. He was the one that actually clearly designed it to the last eighth degree with the number of fasters that we would need the various types of wood that we would need as far as the dimensions. And everything about it. And then he drove down and donated five days of his time to help me along with my friend Pete Lowney at Adam Michigan. Anyway, I'm giving you the backstory here for what I want to tell you. And that is more about the details of this bed, the material I chose to use, why I chose to use it. Am I concerned about any of those decisions because they're quite counter to what I would have normally gone with or what you would think that I would be going with. And both elements, main elements of the beds, which includes pressure treated pine and galvanized metal panels. So there's some chemical involved in the galvanization project or product. And there is, of course, chemicals involved in treating the wood to allow it to preserve. And as an organic gardener, that seems very counterintuitive. And I get that. I understand it. I got a lot of questions about that. People sort of challenging me on my decisions on that as well as curiosity questions about more details of my beds and my choices and the soil and all of those things. So that's what we have for you today is for me to go through many of the questions I got because we opened up to an unlimited audience. Anybody that had any questions, let me know because I was going to do a live Q&A, which I did and which we will have a link to and you can go watch it on YouTube. It ended up being about two hours. And you could maybe skip through that, but it's it's a lot of good information. More so than I will provide today. But I am going to hit on the high points today because I know now what was the most common or were the most common questions. And I have the answers to those. So that's going to be the focus of what we'll talk about today. And as we get into those, thanks to our sponsors for today's episode. And then we'll pick right back up and get into the meat of this conversation. Territorial seed company is one of our long time entrusted partners and they have some really exciting things happening this season because they've added more than a hundred new products this year. So there's a lot to explore and you'll find new plants, seeds and practical garden supplies throughout their website, including plenty of things that are genuine and useful in the garden. Flower growers have a lot to look forward to too. Territorial added more than 45 new flower varieties with great options for containers, borders, and dependable cut flowers. 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Hand made by a skilled North Carolina leather artisan, this sheath is beautiful and built to last a lifetime. You can check it out and order your own ultimate gardening sheath, exclusively at JoeGardiner.com slash UGS, that's JoeGardiner.com slash UGS. Okay, so fast in your seatbelt, here we go. I've given you quite a bit of information on the backstory other than to say, you know, when it happened when Pete and David came down here, it was the week before Thanksgiving and actually bumped right up against Thanksgiving by the time that they went home with 16 new beds created in my garden. But I really hadn't considered doing it that quickly from when the decision was made on that's what we're going to do. But based on everybody's availability, I wasn't going to push back on there coming down here to help me all on their dime. I can't get over their generosity, but I couldn't have done it without them either. But we did it. And because I knew they were coming, I had to tear down the existing beds, because they were still standing and working, but they needed to come out. I needed to clear the deck so that we had a complete blank slate for the new beds to go in. And that alone was 10 nonstop days of work. So ahead of their arrival, I was going nuts getting ready. And it was the most arduous project I'd ever done over 10 consecutive days or any number of consecutive days to make it ready. But that had to be done first, of course. And it got done right prior to their basically arriving. But there was a lot of right of wood. And I'll talk about what I'm going to do with that wood. And the other thing was soil. These are huge raised beds. They're 12 feet by 4 feet and they're 18 inches high. And each bed was filled with amazing soil that I had. But one of the things that was also of concern that contributed to the recognition that I needed to replace. Not only the beds, but the soil in the beds. And that was because of the soil pathogens that were just happily alive and well in my garden soil, my great composted soil beds. And that's because through the lack of rotating my crops of the same family year after year and all those beds because I love to grow tomatoes and peppers in the same family. If you do that too many years in a row, typically more than two or three, the soil pathogens will continue to persist and it will catch up with you. And even though I did rotate, I wasn't as consistent as I knew I should have been and it did catch up with me. And after that point, I couldn't go through a year of without getting tremendous diseases on my plants that work from the soil. And there's really no way there's no work around for that. You know, you can proactively do some things to try to prevent airborne diseases blowing in and infecting your plants. But when it's coming in through the roots, you can't really do anything about that. So I knew the writing was on the wall there and another reason to go forward on the project. And so as far as the soil, I'll just tell you that since we're on this subject because it was just incredible soil other than the pathogens, I relocated the soil. And some questions logically would come up and did come up about, well, aren't you concerned about the pathogens in the soil affecting your other plants? And I am not. And the reason for that is you may be familiar with what is called the disease triangle. And in order for a pathogen to infect a particular plant, three things need to be present. That is the pathogen, that is the host, the certain plant that can be affected by that particular pathogen. And the third thing is the environmental conditions. And it's only when all three of those things come together and align perfectly that the infection actually takes place. The pathogen can be present, the environmental conditions can be there, and the host can be there. But if they just all don't happen at the same time, or if any one of those three things is missing, the disease or the infection doesn't happen. So by moving them in to my native plant beds where I was not growing anything related to what was in my vegetable bed, I was not concerned with infecting any of my native plants. So that's why I moved it there. And I wasn't about to waste it. It was really good. But I couldn't afford to reuse it either at any depth because I didn't want to take the chance. And so much of what I do is not only my hobby, but it's my profession. And it just, I can't afford to take that chance, basically. So I had to make a conservative move. And that's that's what happened there. So back to the bed decision, I'd gotten the beds removed. I relocated the soil. The wood itself, although it was severely rotted with many of the pieces, it was still nice chunky untreated wood that as it continues to break down as organic material that can improve any soil. You need constantly to amend your soil with good organic matter. And there was nothing wrong with that wood for that purpose. So I haven't refilled the beds or built the new beds or built, but I haven't done anything beyond that. So there's nothing that has been put into the beds yet. But when it is time to add the soil, before I add the soil, I'm going to put some of those large pieces of wood into the bottom of each bed. If you're familiar with the concept of hukka culture, that is utilizing pieces of wood, basically logs and stumps to take up space within a mounted area of soil. So underneath that is the logs or the stumps. And that is recognized to eventually break down and continue to feed the soil, but it also reduces the amount of soil that you need to grow what it is in the soil area that is applied above the wood. So that's the concept that I will be using here too. And utilizing some of that wood in honor of the wood that really worked its hard out for me for 14 years. All right. So back to the contents, the material that I used. First of all, let's talk about the wood. Many people were concerned that I was using treated wood. Now, if we stepped back in time, going back to 2003 or prior, that concern is warranted. And I wouldn't even be entertaining that option because prior to 2003, the wood treatment process included a chemical known as arsenic. I'm sure you know that that is not a friendly chemical that we want to have in our food gardens, right? Or anywhere for that matter. But that was the primary active ingredient that preserved the wood. And CCA was the initials chromated copper arsenate. And it's nasty stuff if you're going to grow food in it, especially. And so that's why I've never even entertained that. But in 2000, at the end of 2003, there was a voluntary cease of the use by manufacturers into the consumer market, the household user for access to that product that included arsenic. Now, that product still exists, but it's not available to consumers. So if you walked into Loser Home Depot or a lumberyard as a consumer, that's not going to be available, which is fine. But what has changed is the replacement of arsenic with copper is the active ingredient to preserve the wood. And there are many opinions on it doesn't last as long. And that may be true, but because I've never really had either treated wood in my garden to test it for any length of time, I wouldn't know. But some people say that's the case. But in my case, the treated wood that I'm buying is the active ingredient of course is copper, because that's the option. I don't have an option otherwise. And that's fine. And that's why I felt like I can go with that because copper is, you know, an element that is utilized by plants anyway. And there's some other reasons why there's no concern really for the leaching that could take place from the wood and be absorbed into the plants. And I'm going to talk about that in a little more detail here. And I've made a lot of notes. And I'm going to have to refer to these a little bit and kind of read them just so that I get the points that I wanted to share with you across. Now, first thing I want to mention is there is a study, there are a lot of studies actually that have come out over the years to study the health risk or risk period of treated wood, especially the newer treated wood using copper. And there is a recent study from Oregon State University. And we will have a link in the show notes for that. You can go straight to it. It's about nine pages. It's very interesting. If you want to geek out on all the details, but I'm going to give you the summary of it from that study as well as other studies that tend to follow exactly the findings of this Oregon State study. But the bottom line conclusion to that was that it showed this is a two year study that they published not too long ago. But the studies show that there was no increase in copper concentration that was detectable and vegetables that were grown in garden boxes. In other words, raised beds made with CAC or the treated wood using copper over vegetables grown in untreated beds. No effect of the treated beds was observed over two growing seasons. Treated wood garden bed material increases copper concentrations and soils within 25 millimeters of the bed edge, which is about one inch by a factor of 20 parts per million. Okay. Relative to levels measured in untreated garden boxes. But these increases were seen in both years of the study within 25 millimeters of the bed edge. But the increases in soil copper concentration near the bed edge were minor and did not increase copper levels beyond the natural range of the area. So there's a lot more information to support that as well as specifics to many tests that they did. And that's all in that study that we will link to. But that's enough of the information for you to understand without going into the details as to my rationale for getting the fact that yeah, I'm okay with that. And beyond that, I really did assess more of the scientific data such as understanding that metal tends to be more mobile in soils that have lower pH. So anything probably below 6.0 or 5.5 would be considered very acidic. And in acidic soil, metal tends to be more migratory and it potentially would leach further into the center of the bed. But when it is closer to neutral or somewhere 6.5 to 7.0, we're dealing with closer to alkalinity. And in those cases, the metal is binding chemically to the soil particles and it does not migrate. So it's basically stable in the soil. And because as an organic gardener and many of you are as well and you use a lot of compost, another organic matter to improve your beds each year, that is inherently going to increase the pH. So you're going to go even if you had a acidic soil like here in Georgia where we have red clay that's highly acidic, although that's, you know, Georgia clay is great for holding nutrients, but as it's acidic, you'd want to raise the pH anyway for the optimal growing conditions. And you know, I do that. And a lot of organic matter includes the compost, which raises the pH, which helps create a more alkaline environment and binds the any particles potentially in the soil. So that's why as an organic gardener, you could feel even better about the fact that even if you were a little bit concerned or you read the study and you saw, well, gosh, there's still some increase in the parts per million. But again, in a acidic soil, really, is where that may have a bearing, but the studies point out that there's really no significant difference and really negligible to nonexistent in the summary. Okay. So that's the treated wood overview. Lots more there if you want to dig into it through that link. Beyond the health risk, I mentioned just a second ago or a minute ago that there has been some claims or concerns that the modern treated wood is not as long lasting as the old treated wood. Even if that were true, I would rather have modern treated wood that didn't last quite as long versus the arsenic treated wood that would last longer. It may last longer, but I'm not sure I would by growing in that sort of environment. So I'm okay with that. But the big real point of where there is a potential concern that you can mitigate with the modern treated wood is the exposed parts or where the wood is cut. When you buy treated wood that's already been dealt with at the factory before you buy it, it goes through the process and all the edges are sealed. And the chemical is absorbed into the wood and you're good to go. I mean, it's basically locked in there. But where the exposure point is is if you were to cut that treated wood, now you have raw wood exposed to potential soil in direct contact. And when you buy this wood, a lot of times it's treated for direct soil contact. And that all of my wood is that. It's ground treated wood. But when you make that cut and then you have soil in contact with that, that's where the opportunity, the biggest opportunity for rot occurs. So in that case, being aware of that, what we did is we used some wood preservative sealant, some food grade FDA food contact safe wood seal or what we used was called garden box armor. And we'll put a link into the show notes there. And if you're watching this on YouTube, we'll have a picture of that product right there coming up as I'm talking about it. And you'll see it. But we dabbed and soaked actually all the exposed cut areas that we had to make when we were creating these beds and sealing all the corners, anything in contact with the soil from the cuts was sealed with this product. And so hopefully that will bias roughly the equivalent of had it not been cut as far as the longevity of that part of the wood. So I don't really have concerns on the longevity. And what I've done, what I've learned from my research, by the way, is that for ground treated contact wood that's been certified in that regard, you're looking at 15 or even 20 years, especially on these chunkier pieces that I have that are at the at the base of my beds, they're very heavy four by six pieces of treated wood. That's heavy, thick wood. But even so, you know, there are always variables at play as to how long that wood is really going to last. So you got to take into consideration your unique environment. Do you get excessive amount of rain every year? Do you have other conditions that would potentially cause that wood to degrade faster than somebody else in another environmental conditions? So that's that's the wood issue that I wanted to address. The other one is the metal issue. And I will do a similar discussion about that. And then we'll get into some other elements that will go much faster. But very good questions from the cash of information we got from the people that wanted and no specifics about what we were doing. So back to the metal. I used the metal because first of all, it helped cut down on the costs significantly. And the other reason was I like the idea of a change. I am kind of a creature of habit. I order the same Chinese takeout every week and same toppings on my pizza and all of that stuff. But you know, I decided after 14 years, it might be nice as much as I love the look of these existing existing beds to go ahead and give it a different look. And as I mentioned, I like the look of what was presented to me before. So that said, yeah, let's do it. And then of course, cost is a big part of it. And it really significantly cut down. And I'm going to share the cost details in the course of this discussion a little bit later. So we'll get into that. But for now, it really made a big difference in the cost per bed. And these are again, these are 12 feet by 4 feet wide beds, 18 inches high. So that's a lot of material. And that metal covered a lot of ground that saved me a lot of money. But as far as the metal itself, galvanized metal is coated with a zinc based material, I guess, is how you would address that. And a lot of people were concerned with the leaching of that. So again, I did my homework. I always do. And the concerns are really unfounded. They're warranted, but they are unfounded when you do your homework. There are quite a few studies, in fact, addressing the concerns about food safety or the safety of using metal and raised beds or in contact with soil, et cetera. So extension services, several extension services, and other scientific organizations concluded that the health risk are minimal or non-existent under normal gardening conditions. And authoritative information on this topic can be found throughout resources from cooperative extension and scientific journals. And I did go ahead and give you a little more information there. Here's what I found. And that was the conclusion that while a single landmark study is not typically cited, the consensus on the safety of galvanized metal for gardening is based on scientific understanding of zinc toxicology, soil chemistry, and data from environmental and agricultural agencies. So I think we've covered the gamut there. But these sources include numerous US University Extension programs, including Iowa State University Extension, Purdue University Extension, and the University of Vermont Extension. Along with scientific and government agencies with research supporting this safety assessment. And that comes from various sources, including the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the Journal of Environmental Quality and the FDA, which permits the use of galvanized steel for food handling, excluding highly acidic food. And that goes back to what I just talked about for the wood. And it goes on to say, which is relevant as typical garden soil pH avoids this acidic reaction. So the reason why the FDA considers this safer food use in a garden environment is generally you're not growing food. In an acidic soil environment, because food doesn't respond other than blueberries, it's not a conducive environment for productivity of edible plants in an acidic environment. So you've got a lot of science backing the fact that there's not a lot to be concerned about. But I am going to give you a few specifics that if you'd like to make note of or it'll be in the show notes, at least a paraphrasing of what I'm about to share with you. And that was a few bullet points. And I will say that, you know, a few people in the comments on YouTube, generally, or elsewhere, you know, you get people from just trolling you and making assumptions without reading or watching the video and just assuming that, you know, you don't do your homework. But if you know me, I think you know, I do my homework had they actually looked and watched the material or read what I had said before they, you know, made their comment. Here's what I'm going to tell you regarding using galvanized metal and raised beds. Here's a brief summary of what people should be aware of when considering health concerns. And that is there is the potential for negligible amounts of zinc migration into the soil closest to the metal. And as you've likely heard, the dose makes the poison context is always important for backing up or refuting the claim. And it is certainly relevant in this case galvanized metal is widely considered safe for use and raised beds. And the risk of harmful metal migration is extremely low under normal gardening conditions, which I've addressed with you on other parts of this conversation with the wood. Zinc is an essential micronutrient for both plants and humans. And while it can technically leach into the soil, it is generally considered negligible. Metal zinc coating breakdown and migration is most likely in highly acidic soils, typically below 5.5 pH, which we've covered already. Most vegetable gardeners have a pH near neutral pH of 6.5 to 7.0, where the zinc remains stable. Rather than migrating in soil, metals chemically bind to soil particles and non acidic soil pH environments. Again, we've covered that. You are likely exposed to more zinc through standard tap water often delivered via old galvanized pipes than you would ever receive from vegetables grown in a galvanized bed. Regarding other metal exposures such as cadmium and lead, while trace amounts of other metals like that were once more common in older galvanizing processes, modern quality galvanized steel is produced to standards that make this risk minimal for home gardeners. You can watch my live Q&A where I address the use of metal in my new Ray's Bed design. We'll have that link in the show notes as well so you can watch that entire video. All right, that's the two biggest areas of discussion and concern and questions. And hopefully I've addressed them to your satisfaction, but there is a lot more information that you could read up on if you wanted to and we've provided the information through the links in the show notes. All right, so let's go to some of the questions that had come up during the live session that we did and I'll tell you more about those things. Probably the other concern, which wasn't nearly as scary, none of these are scary now that you know more of the information, but a lot of people were commenting on the thought that the metal would really heat up the soil. And some people said, you know, I have noticed in my metal Ray's Bed, the soil is much hotter. And certainly I had thought about that too and wanted to look into that and be satisfied that that really wasn't going to be a concern. And from what I've learned in conversation with people that I trust and respect and admire and know that they have experience with their metal Ray's beds. One of my friends is Lisa. She lives in Australia. She works in a nursery. They sell a lot of Ray's beds over there and their metal. And she said she has never in all the years that she's worked there and all the beds that she sold to her customers. No one has ever complained about the heat. And she says there they get very hot in the hottest parts of the year. And it's just not the issue that people seem to think it is. Other people that have actually tested hit this and this is now back in the States, the conclusion or the findings is pretty much consistent. And that is right up against the metal side within the bed. If you're taking a thermometer and you're checking the temperature of the soil right up against the metal. A couple of examples here. One was 97 degrees Fahrenheit next to the metal in the soil. I'm not sure how deep but probably close to the surface. That's 36 centigrade. But the normal soil temperature when you move in just a little bit from right along the edge was 89 degrees, which is a different 32 degrees centigrade by the way. But that's just an 8 degree difference. And across the board in the studies that were accessible through my research, that was what most people were finding is that right up against the metal near the surface, you were getting about an 8 degree increase in temperature. Okay, I can live with that. And so you don't plant right up against the surface. Now if you're thinking, yeah, but what about roots? Once the plants are in the ground, the roots want to spread out everywhere. And they're going to go wherever they want to go. Well, yeah, that's kind of true. They do go where they want to go. But yeah, roots, roots like the rest of the plant, they're pretty smart if I may anthropomorphize a little bit. But roots can sense and respond to where they should grow and to the places that they should avoid. And the term applied to the ability for these roots to respond to unfavorable conditions or favorable conditions with their roots is thermotropism. And so if they were liking the temperature that they were growing in the direction of, that's positive thermotropism. And negative thermotropism is when they are not liking that. And so they avoid or they make a detour. They grow in the opposite direction. So they're sensing that the soil temperature is too hot close to the edge. They're not going to grow there. There's a couple other things that you can do if you were trying to lower the temperature near the edge. First of all, you could plant really heat loving edibles or flowers. Mayor Gold would be a good option. And you know, sunflowers and zinnias and the herbs rosemary times sage oregano. All of those have no problem with nice hot conditions. I mean, that's where they really thrive. So use that part of the bed if you really want to utilize the soil there because they should take it no problem. In my case, if I find that the soil there is excessively high and maybe that's the eight degree range, I will have already put down a significant layer of mulch as I always do, which is going to cool the soil surface. Now I know the heat is coming from the absorption from the side panels. That's going to buffer the sun's impact, but the magnification of the heat by the absorption through the metal closer to the surface, it probably will be hotter than further down because it's a combination of the sun and the absorption of the rays striking the metal. But anyway, all that to say, between the mulch and drip irrigation or evenly moist soil consistently, that has got to have a positive impact on soil temperatures. And if you are an organic gardener and you have amended your soil, you have a lot of organic matter there. And organic matter does a great job at maintaining consistent soil moisture. It does a fabulous job of both allowing excess moisture to drain, but not letting go of all of it. So there will always be a time or for an extended period of time where you have nice even consistent soil moisture and that is definitely going to offset dry soil, the difference between dry soils temperature and evenly consistent moist temperature. Why else did I use metal? Well, I mentioned changing up the look, it's going to be kind of fun. And I do like the fact that once the shininess of the metal fades off and that happens naturally, you could accelerate that process with certain chemical treatments. But I'm not in a hurry for that. I've got a few months before I'm going to be planting out those beds. And by then I have a feeling that metal will really mellow out as far as the shininess of it because when you do buy those panels and I got mine at Home Depot for $29 a piece and they're 12 feet long and 26 inches high. And they're very thin, surprisingly thin. I ordered a stack of 45, I ordered 45 panels and when the guy delivered them, he drove up to where he was going to put them and I was looking at the pallet and it was less than an inch thick. And I said, well, where are the rest of them? Are they still on the truck? He said, no, that's all of them. I thought, how can that be? But anyway, they're super thin, but because of the corrugation and their 10 corrugation humps in the course of the 26 inches, I think there's 10 or more. Anyway, that increases the stiffness of it. So when you put that vertically in the bed against some support, it really prevents any bulging or give in the metal, but it's a surprisingly thin when you're looking at it for the first time. Anyway, it's actually durable. I'm adding durability here as to why I use the metal because of the way those panels work with the corrugation. That strengthens the give. It makes it hold in place, but you need to have some support in the framing of the bed. So when the metal is up against the framing, that prevents it from giving or bowing out. So you've got that. You've got the look. You've got the cost effectiveness because I just mentioned what they actually cost and how much cheaper that is compared to what hardwood would be untreated, hardwood would be. Now, as far as the metal and the temperature relationship of that, because we do note that there's about an eight degree increase potentially near the surf, near the edge, you could have a faster spring warmup of the soil. So if you did live in an area where you've got colder climates and the soil temperature takes longer to warm up, that's going to stall your plants from really taking off. They need, they're waiting for the warm soil. This is going to help with that. You're going to increase the soil temperature faster at least closer to the edges. So you got that working for you there. And then you've got flexibility with the customization in the size of the panels. So you do have some options there. But as far as the panel linked in height itself, this is something that really was helpful for me. When we design these beds, we decided to save some money on the panels. Again, I told you they cost 29, let's add tax and just say they're $30 a panel. And if we, according to the drawing or the design that David came up with, we could take one panel, cut it longwise in half, and each half would cover one of the sides completely, one of the long sides completely. So we would have basically no waste and we could get a lot more mileage that way. But the downside was, and I over looked thinking through this when I was so excited about the design and how it was going to work out and how it was going to save some money, the downside was that when you attach the metal panels to the frame, the bottom part of the frame is not covered by the metal. So there would be direct exposure or contact of the soil with the wood. And we had talked about that after the fact and I really wasn't worried about it. But then I started thinking as I had time to noodle on that a little bit. And because I had bought so many panels to begin with way more than I needed, I decided to go ahead and take some of those extras and cut lengthwise pieces and just add those to the bottom of the interior and just marry it in with the other panels, the corrugation, you know, the, the hums and the channels. Well, they really line up nicely so they can just seamlessly connect to each other and then you just screw them together. So I went and ended up doing that with all of my badges coming back and cutting pieces to fit the gap or the extra part that had the wood. And so now all of the interior is completely covered by the metal corrugation and there's no direct contact with the wood. And I do want to share with you about adapting the size of the metal. How are you going to do that? One of the people asked in the live Q&A, can you get different sizes and thickness of the metal? I'm sure you can. I just wasn't able to find it in the time that I took to look for it. I needed that, you know, I didn't have a lot of time extra time. And the lumber yards that I called and I called a lot around the Atlanta area, they weren't, they didn't sell them the corrugated metal, they just sold the wood. Now that's not the case up where my friend Pete lives. He was able to get both where he is, but down here that just wasn't an option. And then Home Depot had it. So I went ahead and just bought it there. But if you found that you didn't have options to get sizes that you wanted already cut, although I also learned from Pete that where he is in his lumber yard in Wisconsin, they'll cut to size the metal. That would be a really nice feature. But assuming you can't do that and for probably most consumer-based places, they're not going to cut the metal for you. But here's the good news. If you will spend another $230, I think there is a 10-snip or a metal cutter. I think the term, anyway, we'll have that in the show notes as well. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you're looking at that tool right now. But it's a cordless rechargeable cutter that you just, I'm telling you what, because the metal that we buy is thin, it's really easy to cut with this tool and this tool is made for that very purpose. So it goes really fast. It almost cuts like butter and we've got some video of my cutting right through that metal. So it was very easy to do that. It doesn't require any strength. It just requires this tool and then it's a no-brainer. So I encourage you to look into that and see the link that we'll have to that in the show notes as well. If you're thinking about doing this, I can't imagine doing it without that tool. So pretty much factor that into your budget because you'll need it. What about hardware cloth? And hardware cloth, if you've heard the term and you probably know what it is, but if you don't, that's okay because I can't visualize hardware cloth being what I'm about to describe. But it's like the rolls of metal fencing that have very small grid patterns. They're square grid patterns and they come in different options. You can go half inch, three quarter inch, one inch square and probably larger than that. And you can buy it by the roll. Usually the rolls are maybe two feet wide or four feet wide and then different links depending on how much you need and then they're easy to cut. But the reason why I am using the hardware cloth is because I forgot to use it when I built my original raised beds. And after the fact, I knew that I would regret it at some point. And that point came about eight years in when moles, which are the critters that, you know, like submarines burrow just underneath the surface and they are looking for worms and other little critters. Some of those, they burrowed under my beds and worked their way up into the soil and had a all you can eat buffet for two seasons, two years in a row, basically, because I could never get them out of there. And they just had their way. But it was frustrating because it caused the soil to implode because they would make their tunnels all through the beds, creating cavities. And so I discovered I had a problem when I was hand watering and I was standing there by a plant. And all of a sudden, the soil is just caving in like a sinkhole. And then I put two and two together and I saw the tunnels coming into the into the beds. So anyway, I had to wait that out for two years, but they haven't been back since at least into the beds. But this time I'm preventing that from happening by putting in hardware cloth, which is staple gunned to the frame, the bottom of the frame. And then the frame is laid down. And so the weight of the frame combined with all the staples going around is going to secure that hardware cloth. And in my case, I also spent a little bit of extra money, it wasn't much to get coated hardware cloth, which is a, which is a basically a plastic dip that coats the metal. And would I assume increase the longevity of that, which will be in contact with soil on all sides, but with the vinyl coating of the dip around the metal, I think that's definitely going to buy me some more time. And that was probably the only thing I would have changed. People ask me, well, what will you do different when you make your new raised bed garden? And I said, well, I'm going to have to change the material of the raised beds, but I'm not going to change the footprint of my raised bed. That I knew, always knew that because I always love the layout, I love the look of it. It had nice pathways, wide pathways going through the long axis, going long, you know, long ways. And then the one perpendicular to that at the intersection. And then in between the beds, there was plenty of room for wheelbarrows and mobility. So the width between the beds was generally four feet. The other thing about that layout. And we'll have also pictures so you can get an overhead view of the layout to see that how they look like it kind of looks like a crossword puzzle, but it's very linear. I mean, I like 90 degree angles and everything's in alignment. That's me. But because of that, that had a lot to do with why in 14 years, I only had one deer jump into my garden, even though I had only four-foot high split rail fences. And we all know that deer can walk over a four-foot high fence. So if they wanted to get in, they can easily get over four feet. And I knew that too. But my rationale, and I've said this before, but in case you're wondering, the layout of the beds within the garden, within the fence was going to be a dilemma for deer that if they were considering jumping in, and I have lots of deer around here every day, they would have to assess where would be a safe place to land. If they found that safe place once they were in there, where were they going to have an opportunity to jump out safely and quickly. And their depth perception deer would rather jump right up and over something rather than across something. And outside of my fence line, I had lots of blueberry bushes and other things growing that would require the deer to jump across rather than over, easily over. So that was a deterrent. And then the other thing is their depth perception is very poor. So as they're trying to assess a safe landing spot, and it's really hard to get a read on where is that landing spot when the beds are configured as they are when you're looking at it from the outside end, and you're at a certain height, you don't have that perspective that you probably would need to do that. I am assuming that's pretending to be a deer, but I'll tell you what, it worked for me until this very last year, ironically, I saw a deer. I'm my garden as I often do, but this one I'd seen some damage in my garden from nibbled down sunflower stock. And it was higher up on the stock to tell me that that was not a rabbit or anything else other than a deer, and knowing that I had deer and seeing them kind of looking in, I realized they had. And the only way they jumped in, I found this out because I caught it in the action and I filmed it doing it, was it jumped over the gate, which on the other side of the gate was that long open four-foot-wide pathway. So they had a clear runway on the other side. Actually, in hindsight, I'm surprised they didn't think about that earlier than 14 years, but no one, they never did. And it was this year that finally they figured it out too. So I will deal with that. That'll be a simple fix. I'll put some sort of barrier over the gates, and that should do that. Soil, let me just go back to the soil real quick too. What am I going to use now that the soil has been relocated and I have to start fresh? I'm going to go back to what I used the first time and I called it the perfect soil recipe. I have a post in my website and we'll link to that too and we've got some videos on how I did the perfect soil recipe. But truly, I'm not going to change that because it worked incredibly well for me. So why would I change that? They say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So I'm not going to fix it. I'm going to just repeat it. My recipe is simply 50% high quality topsoil. And before I go on, let me just tell you that what does that really mean? What is high quality topsoil? Well, if you were by the bag at the box store, that ain't high quality topsoil. That's would ground up and hoping to degrade before you buy it. So it looks more like soil. But I got to tell you, I've opened up those bags that are I've looked at torn bags at the box stores that say it's topsoil and it's not in topsoil really takes years and years and years to develop and it literally is the virgin soil that's in the very top interest so of an area that hasn't been scraped away yet. Or if it has, it's the new layer that's taken many, many years to degrade to the point that it would be what we call topsoil. But if you were to buy it at a wholesale nursery or a landscape supply company, which is where I would look for it and where I did and get it, I recommend that before you were just to order it, side unseen and have it delivered, go there and see it, feel it, smell it, squeeze it. Seriously, all those things I just said, I want you to do because it's only then that you can assess it to know what I would consider the test to recognize good topsoil or compost in my criteria for that would be before I even get close to it. I want to see it like brownie mix. I want to see the color dark and earthy. I don't want it to be red. I don't want it to be gray. I want it to be dark chocolatey brown or a little maybe a little bit lighter than that. So that's my initial assessment walking up to it. Once I'm there, what am I smelling? Is it sour? Is it off-putting? That's not a good sign. I'm going to grab it. And when I grab it, I'm going to squeeze it. And when I open my fingers, is it there holding together or is it just falling away like sand? If it did that, that's not a good sign. I want it to bind together. But then when I run my fingers through it, I want it to break apart easily. And also while it's in my hand and it's together, I'm smelling it right up next to my nose. And I want it to smell rich and earthy. Last thing is, I don't want to recognize anything in it. I want that topsoil or that compost to be so degraded as far as the initial inputs that it's all homogenous at this point and it all looks the same. But there's a lot of different particulate sizes or particle sizes in good topsoil that creates drainage and yet allows for water retention too. So these are all important things that I don't think we've given enough thought to, but it's critical for the success of good soil. But you want more than just good soil because oftentimes good soil is heavily heavy on just sand, silt, and clay, which are all good. And especially when they're even proportions mixed together, that is amazing. That I mean, in the perfect world, that's what you want for that component of it. But you also want a percentage of organic material, which is the compost. And so by volume, so let's get back to the recipe. By volume, I've got 50% high quality topsoil. I want 30% high quality compost. Now, if you had one or two beds, it might be easy to just harvest that from your own compost bins. In my case, with 16 large tall raised beds, even though I make a lot of compost, that's not enough for my raised beds, even at just 30% of the total. So in my case, I am very fortunate to have a really good reliable source where I can buy really nice, really good compost soil cubed. If you're living the southeast, you probably already know about them. But if not, you've seen me talk about them. You've seen me use it in, in and around my garden beds, in and in and up, non in and ground raised beds. But find that place for you. And do the same test. And that will be your 30%. Because that's your, you need that organic matter by volume. And that's about what you need to really get the balance in place. And then you want to leave room for another 20% because that gives you options. Now, you don't have to leave room for an extra 20% if you really like the top soil and the compost blend. Honestly, the compost is the sum of a lot of broken down organic material over time. So you could just go with 50% top soil and 50% compost. I would probably go a little more top soil. It's not an exact science. And that was just my initial recipe and it worked. But hopefully that will get you started. And again, I've got a lot of reference options that we will put in the show notes. And you can go there for more information from me. Okay. All right. So watering real quick. I have dedicated irrigation bibs already set up when I built my initial raised beds. I had irrigation installed. And the pipe comes up within the bed. Each bed has its own with a spiket on top for drip irrigation or soker hoses, whatever. Because a lot of times I would be gone for weeks at a time with my television show or wherever. And I couldn't be back there monitoring. So I needed some sort of automated system for each of the beds. And no two beds were the same as to what I was growing or the watering requirements. So that's why I went ahead and bit the bullet and did that. And frankly, I haven't used it as much as I thought I would. But because it still existed and I didn't want to have to cut them down or wanted to have the option to reuse them in the future, because the layout of the beds are the same. We were able to drop the beds over those existing spikets. So that's all good. But as far as the watering, don't stress out about that. As for me for years now, I've been hand watering with my watering one, my drum watering one. And I'll stand there over those beds and water at the soil level for whatever the plan is. And that gives me a great opportunity to inspect it. Make sure it's looking healthy. Or if I see any warning signs or whatever. Between that and the mulch and having good soil, you don't have to water that often because the soil is going to retain a lot of that moisture. All right. So that's the watering. As far as the cost of the beds, let's do that. And while I'm thinking about it, one of the great resources I mentioned David Park before, in addition to not only designing the bed with a really nice super fancy CAD layout, which is blew my mind because every detail and measurement you could possibly want to know all the wood, all the sizes, all of that stuff is in a free download that we have. And on our website, that will be in the show notes too, just to verify that it's the right one. But I think it's joegarner.com slash raised bed plans. All one word, no spaces joegarner.com slash raised bed plans. It's the plans for all the measurements, all the material, how to make the beds, combine with the video that we did on making the beds that again, you should really take the time to watch if you haven't. It's quite amazing. In the behind the scenes too of what happened before the guys showed up to help make the beds. It was me tearing everything out. So it's kind of fun to watch it too, but I think you'll like it. So be sure to check out that link. But as far as the cost of the beds, David created a spreadsheet within that free handout. So if you liked the design of this bed and you wanted to make one just like it, we gave you two options. You could do the 12-foot length or you could do an 8-foot length. And I think initially we have it set up for the 18-inches tall, but we're working on a modification if we can do it to let you adjust the height of the bed as well. But anyway, you could plug in the variables and it will tell you how much of everything you're going to need. Well, how much wood you're going to need to order of each type and size of wood, what it's going to cost, how many screws you need to buy, how many of different lengths that you're going to need to buy. And I have to say, I was very surprised. I think more expensive than the wood was the screws because you've got some really long ones. We had six inches, four inches, two and a half inches. And anyway, you end up using a lot of screws. But those beds aren't going anywhere either. They're super secure. And that's okay. I like quality and I'm willing to pay for that. And so these beds are as good as they get as far as durability and quality. So we have those plans for you. You can download those. And the cost is there on the cost calculator, which it does for you. I ran my bed through that calculator and they cost $318 per bed. And again, if you look at my beds and the size and everything involved in it, I think that sounds pretty good. And that does not include what you're going to spend on soil. So keep that in mind. And I gave you an estimate there of probably between $50 and $250. You could buy a lot of the really good compost or not. And I don't know what your top soil would cost. But I gave you a range there. Now, that would definitely add up to the cost a bit. But then think about this. Your beds are going to last 15 to 20 years. And if you advertise that over the year, your beds are going to cost you somewhere between $22 on average, maybe a little bit more if you splurge on soil. But $22 per bed per year is about what you'll end up paying in today's value. And I think that's really good. Because if you're growing edibles and you, you're not going to have to go to the grocery store. But if you had to go to the grocery store for everything that you could be growing, you're going to spend way more than that each year. So you're making money on these beds. Let's just say that. All right. So what's left to do? And then we're going to wrap this up. I have to level the beds and do a final adjustment. Since those beds have been made, it's been cold, it's been wet. And you know, the beds are curing the, you're drying out, which is good. I want that. And so I'm about to get back in there and get busy before we fill the soil. But I have to realign the beds and level the ground. So I said, I mentioned at the start of this podcast, I cleared the slate and got everything out of there. But I still need to knock down some of the bumps in the, so the beds are all sitting level and even height with each other. So it looks good. That's the main reason. So it's going to all look aligned nice in every direction. So I need to do that. And I need to get the string line that I've set out into the pathways and make sure everything is centered off of everything else. And I'll start with the main beds right in the very center of the garden and work outward in all directions to keep the alignment consistent. Then I need to fill the beds with a soil that I've already talked about. I'm not quite sure the logistics of that. I've kind of hinted around it. Maybe a soil filling an invitation for locals in the Atlanta area or if you want to road trip it to come help me on a nice Saturday where it's not too cold. And we'll have a fun party filling the beds. I don't know if I'm going to do that, but that's an idea I'm kicking around. So stay tuned if I end up doing that. You'll know about it. And then I need to stain the wood. Right now it's just the un-stained wood color. And I want it to look the same as my greenhouse wood, which is called Yoder Belt Gray. It's a standard custom color that they've come up with for their greenhouse. And I'm going to try to match that and make the bed frame color the same as the greenhouse. Obviously that will tie really nicely together. And then up near the the other view is towards the barn, which is a barn red. And I think the gray dark gray would look good with that. And then I have some overhangs over my windows that have that corrugated metal that also is kind of that Yoder Belt grayish color. So it ought to tie them nicely together. But anyway, that's going to happen. And when it gets a little bit warmer in the woods, had more time to dry out because that's when the stain is more readily absorbent into the wood. Last thing I wanted to tell you is just a fun little question that one of my local friends and customers of Garden Farmgrown, which is my company with my daughter, we sell the seedlings. He's been coming for the annual plant sale, and depending on me to get all his peppers and tomatoes and some herbs each April. So he doesn't have to go to the box store God forbid. And I don't blame him for that because anyway, he ended up asking a question during that live Q&A. And I just will share this with you in closing. And that was his name is Joe Westberry. But he said, Joe, how will this new bed construction affect your April sale of tomatoes and peppers and such? Some of us Atlanta folks are worried sick about having to go to the big box stores. And I just told them Joe not to worry because everything I go and seedlings will happen before those beds get filled and planted. And that's never been an issue in the past and it won't be this time. So you're good to go there. But anyway, that was a lot of information we covered in a little bit over an hour. Thank you for bearing with me. And I hope that you found this really helpful. And please let me know if there's information that I didn't cover that you would like to know. You could put that into the comments on YouTube or you could email me at heyjo at joegardiner.com or reach me on Instagram at joegardiner and let me know. But the best place to do that is in the videos that I talk about in the raised bed rebuild video on YouTube. And then I did a live Q&A video, which is separate from that either place. I look every day for those comments or questions. So I'll be sure to answer you there. I hope you enjoyed this. And thank you for bearing with me and watching this. And again, I hope you found this really helpful. And I have a lot more to share with you because this is an ongoing project. Obviously, there's a lot more to do here before we call it done. And I will be documenting all of that as well and bringing that to you in video and maybe even a follow up podcast. So if you have any thoughts or ideas that you'd like to see or hear more about, let me know that too before I get to that next update. I mentioned a lot today that we will link to in the show notes below for this episode as always. And you can re-listen there as well by going to our website, joe gardener.com. Look for the podcast tab. And this is episode number 451. Now the YouTube version of this video episode will give you more visuals throughout the discussion, but either way for anything that I've created in the past that will enrich what I touched on today, whether that's a video, an article, or another podcast, we will have that information readily accessible to you in the show notes here for the podcast or in the notes below the video if you're on YouTube, watching it. And by the way, that channel, if you want to head over there is joe gardener TV on YouTube announcement wise, our most popular course in the online gardening academy master seed starting is reopening for enrollment during the last week of January. So be looking out for more details on that and just a couple of weeks from now. But that is a fantastic course. If you are a seed starter now, but you want to up your game or your brand new with this and you really want to hit the ground running with success from the start, this course has been very popular with many, many students. They love it. I love it. And I encourage you to just make a note to be on a lookout for that and then check it out when we provide more information. So that's going to do it for today. As always, a huge thanks to my podcast production team Amy Prentice, Brendan O'Reilly and Christine LaFond. And thank you for joining me today. My goal for every episode is to help you take the guesswork out of gardening by teaching you the why do behind the how to so that you can become a better smarter, more confident gardener. You can find me right back here again next Thursday for our next episode of the Joe Gardner show. And I look forward to having you right back here to join me for that. Until then, have a great week. Take care. And I will see you back here really soon. Thanks for listening to the Joe Gardner show. The podcast where it's all about gardening and learning to grow like a pro, no experience required. For more information, podcasts, and how to visit us online at JoeGardner.com.