Is the Lumber in My Garden Poisoning My Vegetables?

Don’t worry. Evidence shows it’s O.K.

Raised beds constructed of pressure-treated lumber are quite commonly used for food gardening. I was going to build some new beds for my veggies this year and initially hoped to use cedar or redwood lumber which contains natural preservatives.

Yikes! The cost was way outside of my budget and I knew pine lumber would decompose within a few years. I looked at metal containers, bricks, and stones, too.

I’ve used this lumber for fence posts and outdoor stairs but I didn’t know if it was safe to use around edible plants.

So I thoroughly researched the safety of the chemicals used in the wood preservatives.

Excellent news. In 2003, lumber manufacturers in the United States stopped treating residential lumber with arsenic and chromium.

YellaWood® uses the first wood preservative process to be awarded the coveted Environmentally Preferable Product (EPP) certification by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS).

The negligible amount of copper released bonds to the organic matter in the soil and becomes inactive. Copper is even harder for plants to absorb when soil is a neutral or slightly alkaline pH, as it is here.

A plant would die long before it could absorb enough copper to be toxic to humans. Liquid copper fungicides are approved for use on certified organic farms.

John Harrison, President of JRH Toxicology, writes in 2017 that copper azole has been evaluated for safety in residential construction applications.

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