Corrugated steel garden beds

I have a bunch of fall veggies I need to plant, not to mention the garlic I ordered.  I still have a lot of summer veggies going strong. When I do decide it's time I have to pull my 2 newest beds apart so I can put hard wire cloth down, to keep the gopher plaguing me out.
So I need a few more raised beds.  I'm only working part time, so it needs to be cheap.  We have a bunch of corrugated steel, and a bunch of miscellaneous wood. I thought that would make great raised beds.  No cost win.  Then my husband says what about the lead? I didn't realize the coating has lead in it. Man, now I don't know what to do.
My work has pallet pretty cheap, I could make them out of pallets, if they are the safe ones. I saw a guy on YouTube make some this way, he coated them with linseed oil to help them last longer.  Much more time consuming, and it will cost more.  
I'm just not sure what to do.  My raised beds in my veggie garden are cement blocks, and that isn't perfect either.
Just wondering what you all think?  Thanks

It seems that the lead in galvanized coating is an impurity in the zinc itself. I agree that lead is not lovely stuff, and I don't wish to ingest more of it. Still, it doesn't leach or travel in soil -- it stays put. And plant roots don't soak it up (though it will mechanically adhere to root veggies as part of the soil -- scrub/peel is the solution).

I'm a lot more worried when I see garden beds made with railway ties. Yikes! Galvanized steel is benign in comparison. Personally, I would use the metal and add a liner of landscape fabric to reduce direct soil contact and perhaps reduce corrosion of the metal, which releases the zinc coating in tiny pieces. My 2c.

Jen,

Could you build your beds with corrugated steel and then line with something, almost anything to stop what little leaching might take place?

Maybe you could use a heavy plastic liner, but if you don’t like plastic, maybe some wood wood work for a time before it rotted.

Actually I think the corrugated steel is a great way to to make relatively cheap, long raised beds.

Eric

Thanks guys, I will make my corrugated steel beds.  I can't wait.  I enjoy these kind of projects, and I like the look of this kind of bed.  My son as predicted says to me, mom you don't need another garden bed.  Silly boy, I will never have enough garden beds.  Thanks again for your knowledge.  Happy gardening.

Might be some ideas in these two threads for you.  My best growth has been from these two different sets of corrugated beds.
https://permies.com/t/134151/filling-raised-beds#1070144  2x4's and thin corrugated tin.
https://permies.com/t/134231/ungarbage/Reusing-heavy-duty-metal-roofing  furring strips and heavy duty galvanized steel roofing.

Both have worked very well for me.

The thinner tin is on the left, the thicker galvanized is on the right.  Took this picture this week.

It's done, and I'm happy with it.  Now It needs to be moved to it's permanent home and filled.  I will fill it like a hugel beet.  It was actually very easy went together super fast until I got to installing the metal sides.  I feel so stupid.  I measured the inside of the box.  Cut the steel with tin snips. The first one is the only one that fits.  I can't tell you how many times I took a sliver off the end only to discover it still didn't fit.  I wasn't calculating the extra space the corrugation took.  By the time my son came home from work, I'm super frustrated and my hand is killing me.  By then I have finally realized my mistake, but still have more to cut.  He wanted to know with all the extra space the wood gives why even worry about getting close to the corner.  I just feel it gives it more strength.  He pulls out the circular saw and cuts it for me. (I didn't use it because my husband said it would ruin the blade and the saw.  My son said blades are cheap, and the saw is fine doing a couple cuts.  I'm not sure who is right, but at that point I was glad to move on.)  The project cost me less then 20.00 10.00 for the flashing and 10.00 for the screws. I used a lot, but still have a lot left, that's why I say less then 20.00$  (why is the most expensive part of most of my projects the screws?)  I could have used wood on the corners and saved myself the 10 for that, but I liked the way it looked in the youtube video I watched, and I have made a lot of cool projects with the red wood, and want to make it go as far as I can.  It turned out almost the way I envisioned it.  I was going to make it 6' long by 2' wide.  (the steel was 8' so I figure 6x2, no waist)  The redwood is only 5' long, so it wouldn't have looked as good, and been a lot harder to make.  So 5' X 2'.  The other thing I should have changed is the width.  I have gophers, so I need hardwire on the bottom.  I got hardwire on clearance so I didn't have to buy it, but it was only 2'wide.  I ended up installing a piece of wood on each side to make it easy to attach the hardwire cloth. Next time I would probably make it 5' X 22"  Live and learn.  The bottom line is it didn't cost me very much to make, I enjoyed doing it for the most part,  I learned a few things, and have a great new raised bed.  I think I need to make more.

I like the beds Jen.  What do you plan to fill those beds with?

Thank you. I bought a bunch of asparagus starts.  Since I know they have to stay put, I don't want to put them in the regular veggie garden.  Knowing myself, I will find some companion plants and flowers to join them.

Very nice!

For future reference there are saw blades to be used on metal. We have a small circular saw, 9 or 10 in. The blade was  cheap enough that I bought one.  The cross cut saw, no way. Yikes.

I made two more.  We have several pieces of corrugated steel, but we also have a barn in need of a lot of repairs.  I wanted to make a couple more beds, but didn't feel I should use two pieces of steel. I designed a different bed so it would be almost as big, but only use one sheet of steel.  It was great on paper, but didn't turn out well.  With a ton of wood glue, screws, and extra support, I believe it will hold together.  It looks great as long as you are several yards away.  We will chalk it up to a learning experience.  With my husband's help we did a redesign.  This one turned out much better.  I bought one more box of screws for 10.00, and I have probably 3/4 of the box left. So we will say it cost me 2.50 for both beds.  I still have 2 3' sections of steel left, so I plan to make a couple of small beds with it.  I'm glad I decided to do this project.  I can never have to many garden beds. Also I discovered the redwood fence boards I got for free were either in worse shape than I thought, or laying there is causing them to split.  I think it's better to use it while I can.  
These new beds also help solve a problem.  I built two hugel beets early this year.  I've never had a problem with gophers in my garden, and hard wire cloth is super expensive, so I didn't put anything down.  Of course I was plagued with a gopher.  The up side is I recently got hard wire cloth on clearance.  The bad news is I have to remove all the soil to ground level.  The beds actually go 2' underground.  That is mostly wood, and branches. I'm not going to remove all of that.  My hopes are the 16" of soil the gopher can't get to will be enough so if it gets roots deeper it will damage, but not kill my veggie.  Now I can use the soil/ compost in the hugel beet to fill the raised beds I just made. Solving the problem of saving all that soil.  
I ordered a bunch of garlic, and have lots of potato onions I saved to replant this year, so the new beds will come in very handy.

Building raised beds seems to be an addiction.  
I soaked peas, and discovered I soaked way to many.  So I made some very simple  boxes that sit against the fence. They are made with only the redwood fence boards, because I wanted them short and narrow so I can still get my wheelbarrow through. The boxes are 11" high, 5' long, and 5 1/2" wide.  0 cost to make. I filled 1/3 with 1 year old wood chips, 1/3 with soil I dug out of the chicken coop, and a 1.5 cf bag of mushroom compost for each box.  Both boxes cost about 8.00 for the compost.  
I don't know if the peas will do well in these boxes.  I read peas need 12" to 18"  for roots, but also read they do fine in 6".  So this will be a little experiment.  It's a no loose situation the way I look at it.  I may get lots of extra peas, but even if I don't, the seeds were extra, and I will enjoy planting flowers and other stuff in them until they rot.

Still learning.  One of each ends of my little boxes split. Lots of the boards are split, so I should have realized this would happen. I should have had the grain going horizontally.  Screwed a piece on the split ends. Looks like crap, but is staying together.  The peas are popping up.

This seems to be an addiction this point.  This is # 6 of the fence boards and corrugated steel.  It's extra special. All the coragated steel is recycled from a shed my husband helped take down years ago.  The steel for this bed was used as a roof for my chickens nesting boxes for about 15 years.  Now it's starting it's 3rd life as a raised bed.  A home for okra.

Your beds look lovely. My dad built beds like that and they work wonderfully for him. It keeps the bunnies and voles out of it. He put a foot of gravel in the bottom with hardware cloth on top of that. It's also really nice for him not to have to bend down, planning for when he is older.

My cedar beds that we built 6-7 years are already rotting at the bottom where they touch the ground so I'm brainstorming what kind of raised beds to replace them with.

Thanks Jenny.  I don't know how long my beds will last.  Redwood is pretty tough, but they started out as a fence, so this is there second life.  I figured since the wood didn't cost me anything, and I enjoy building them I will be happy who ever long they last.

Jenny Wright wrote:Your beds look lovely. My dad built beds like that and they work wonderfully for him. It keeps the bunnies and voles out of it. He put a foot of gravel in the bottom with hardware cloth on top of that. It's also really nice for him not to have to bend down, planning for when he is older.

My cedar beds that we built 6-7 years are already rotting at the bottom where they touch the ground so I'm brainstorming what kind of raised beds to replace them with.

New to this amazing site and my first post LOL!  If the cedar is used to structurally hold the bottom of the box together, I'd say simply raise that "band" up a few inches off the ground.  It would then be able to dry out after wet weather and last much much longer.  With the bed established that long I wouldn't think you need that bottom band to support/keep it from sinking.  If so you could slip a sacrificial board underneath the new band and easy replace that every so many years.

Having grown up with a garden in the 60's/70's I'm most definitely new to this design of raised bed but love it and have read through this thread and the one from Joshua Bertram. More from me later down the road.

Best to ya!

Welcome Charlie 🤗.

My work sell pallets, but the ones they think aren't up to standards go out  in the free pile. My son helped me get a bunch of them.  I made a raised bed for Swiss Chard.  If you look close you will find a lot of flaws, it's not square, or level,  I'm not a carpenter, plus working with wood salvaged from pallets, there's a lot of curved, and warped wood.  Considering all that, I'm very happy with it.  I love the different colors of wood. I put linseed oil on it to help it last a little longer, and it really makes it look pretty.

I keep saying I'm not going to build anymore raised beds. Then I decide I need another.  I love sweet peas, but don't have a good place to plant them, except in my veggie garden. My policy is everything in the veggie garden is eatable. So no sweet peas in the garden.  I built a small raised bed specifically for sweet peas. It's made with 3 redwood fence boards, 2 furring strips, and chicken wire. The redwood were given to me by someone redoing there fence.  It's not the prettiest bed I've made, but it should do the job.
I always put wood in the bottom of my raised beds. I was going to use the wood from the oleander we cut down last year. I would love to get rid of it, and this was a great way. But when it came time I couldn't do it.  The bed is right out the back door. I was thinking it would be a great place to grow some herbs. Maybe my family would use them more if they are right there. So I used old almond wood. It's so hot and dry it takes quite a while for wood to break down. So if I'm going to grow anything we will eat, I don't want to use oleander, it my be ok, but I would rather not chance it.  
It may be to late, but I planted a bunch of sweet peas, and hope it's full of flowers soon.  

Here I go again.  I'm starting to get into herbs ( it very interesting, and my husband has chronic pain, and I think I might be able to help him). Now I have all kinds of herbs and no place to put them. This is another bed made out of pallet wood. It's only 14" high. I want to put it in the food forest want-to-be. I don't want to create a lot of shade.  It's nothing fancy, but will do the job.  

I made a corrugated steel but for a white elephant gift with the family at Christmas.  It was a big hit.  My niece's daughter wanted it very bad, but didn't end up getting it. So I offered to make her one for her birthday. I let her pick the style. She wanted one like my latest.