Edwin de Groot

Hello Eugene,

Thanks for your reply.

The way you described is more or less how we have been doing it for the past 10 years (minus the straw). But because our garden gets completely waterlogged during a bad (Irish) winter and sometimes even during a bad (typically Irish) summer we needed something to raise the level of the beds even more than we can in the way you are describing. 18 inches won't stay up without support with our soil and the amount of rain we are getting..

Hello all,

Thank you for your great replies, really helpful!

We had a change of plan..

We are thinking after reading all the bad prognoses here and on other forums ("it will rot" is the general consensus) of using standard concrete building blocks for our raised beds. The price for those is roughly the same (per length) as scaffolding board would be, but it will last forever!

Only worry is drainage as we wouldn't want to be building a swimming pool. But I suppose with plenty of drainage holes between the blocks and the soil being higher than the surrounding area water should drain away.. (hopefully)

Hello Charli,

Thanks for your reply. Did you treat the scaffolding boards with anything?

Ed

Hello all,

I did a search but couldn't find this discussed anywhere in precise details:

How long do scaffolding boards last used as raised beds?

We are thinking of building raised beds this year. We have had mixed success with conventional vegetable beds in the last 10 years, but after seeing the garden being completely waterlogged during last summer and even more so during this winter (so great to see the sun in these last few days!) we have made up our minds that we need some raised beds to hopefully get some better drainage in the beds.

We were thinking of using scaffolding boards (about €5 per 8ft length here in West Kerry, Ireland) but was advised by a guy making polytunnels to use pressure treated 9x2s (€20 per 16ft lengths). This being double the price, but also double the thickness and treated so should last at least twice as long. Looking from that perspective they work out at more or less the same price/year.

Anyway: an obvious downside of treated wood is the possibility of chemicals leaching into the soil and ending up in our food. One of the reasons of growing (some of) our own food is to avoid the food being chemically treated, so this is obviously an issue..

Also spending twice the amount of money at once is a thing to be considered as well.

So to make a long story short(er) and because there are tons of people using untreated scaffolding boards for their raised beds I was hoping somebody would have used them long enough to know when they start to rot in our lovely damp Irish conditions.