I'm building a raised bed garden for veggies and need some untreated lumber to accomplish this.

The untreated lumber selection at Lowes and Home Depot is pitiful.

What are some other good local lumber stores that might have what I'm looking for?

5/4/2010 8:03:40 AM

Have you tried the one under the beltline on Beryl?

5/4/2010 8:05:37 AM

You could try Capital City Lumber over on Beryl Road.

[Edited on May 4, 2010 at 8:11 AM. Reason : ^ heh we're probably thinking of the same place]

5/4/2010 8:11:04 AM

also the saw mill just past the fairgrounds on hillsborough st. You probably want cedar or redwood by the way, both will be much more weather resistant.

5/4/2010 8:34:25 AM

The Dude:

I am guessing you are trying to avoid arsenic leakage into the ground? You are probably going through more trouble than it is worth to avoid pressure treated lumber if that is the case. Even with the old CCA treatment it was easy enough to use them in garden beds with the right precautions. But since at least 2004, there have been plenty of alternative options that are safe. (Actually earlier, but it has become a lot more available since then)

Problem is that most of the negative articles and info you'll find regarding using pressure treated lumber in gardens is either a dated article, or a recent article using outdated data, or they are talking about CCA and people don't realize that is not the only option out there anymore.

I recommend ACQ, (Alkaline Copper Quaternary)...but then again maybe I'm biased because in 2005 I worked for the company that developed it (Chemical Specialties Inc/Viance). It was developed as a treatment to replace CCA specifically for the arsenic reason. Unless something has changed, it should be readily available and the price was very similar to CCA treated wood. They still have the precaution of not to use it where it can come into contact with food or drinking water but that is a "lawyer's" precaution and really means you shouldn't be eating food off of this raw wood haha. It is a very, very conservative precaution.

ACZA is another one people use...but it still has arsenic (even if it is in a smaller amount).

Obviously even ACQ is still chemicals whether it has arsenic or not so you may be trying to avoid that altogether, but I can assure you that levels of toxicity in ACQ are vastly different than CCA. If you are still worries, you can always wrap the inside and bottom of the wood in a plastic or landscaping fabric so that it is not in direct contact with the soil.

These two locations in Raleigh will definitely have wood treated with ACQ:

Diamond Hill Plywood (don't know if they sell retail or just distribute)
3501 Tarheel Dr.
Raleigh, NC. 27609 US
Telephone: 919-876-4727

Network Distributors (name is misleading but I thought you could walk in and buy wood here..maybe not)
1717 Lake Wheeler Rd.
Raleigh, NC. 27603 US
Telephone: 919-832-4443

I imagine you can buy it at bigger hardwood and lumber stores as well if you request ACQ treated..I just don't know since I don't actually buy much wood; I just know that information from working on it heh.

Hopefully I didn't make the wrong assumption about why you made this thread. And if I did, oh well, maybe someone else will find this information useful

Quote :

"You probably want cedar or redwood by the way, both will be much more weather resistant. "

This is true to some extent. If you are really wanting to use an untreated wood in a garden and you don't want it to rot out quickly, these are the two woods you will want to use. Problem is that I don't see much redwood out this way and a lot of cedar sold in stores is really cut before the trees are mature enough to be as weather and insect resistant as cedar is billed to be. That, coupled with humid weather here in the SE, make it not what it is billed to be when left outside untreated.

[Edited on May 4, 2010 at 8:57 AM. Reason : ]

5/4/2010 8:43:08 AM

what kind of untreated do you need that they don't have at lowe's?

5/4/2010 9:16:43 AM

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/quickref/vegetable/treated_lumber.html

Says even the CCA lumber is OK for use as a landscape timber.

5/4/2010 9:22:28 AM

what about regular old landscaping timbers? are those treated? the ones i got at lowe's last weekend didn't look like they were...

5/4/2010 9:26:26 AM

I still recommend for people to wrap the inside and bottom with a plastic or fabric if I ever hear anyone talk about it. Its cheap and better safe than sorry. Most studies do also back up the report you have just posted from NC State. This is another good one with similar results: http://www.extension.umn.edu/yardandgarden/YGLNews/YGLN-June0101.html# But why have any increase in As in the ground you are growing consumables in if you don't have to?

The switch from CCA to ACQ was actually more for stuff like playground equipment etc. where people are coming into direct contact with it. The amount that would rub off on childrens' hands on the old playground equipment could be quite high.

5/4/2010 9:30:41 AM

We just built three raised garden boxes last weekend, and we used untreated cedar. We got some rough cut wood from Lowe's and it did just fine. Hell, I'll post pics when I get back to the office in a few minutes and unload them from my camera. We did use treated posts to anchor it down, but the boss lady wanted to minimize chances of any chemicals leaching into the soil from the wood.

[Edited on May 4, 2010 at 9:55 AM. Reason : ]

5/4/2010 9:54:20 AM

Just get regular, untreated pine if you are worried about it. You will have to replace it after a couple years, but i wouldnt worry about that since it will be cheap. Oak will last longer, but youll have to go somewhere other than lowes to get number 2 oak since all they have is FAS (no knots pretty much] iirc....If you want it to last long, then get something like cedar....It will be more expensive, but will last longer.

Try capital city lumber near the beltline and hillsborough st....near method rd.

[Edited on May 4, 2010 at 10:13 AM. Reason : i]

5/4/2010 10:08:48 AM

Quote :

"what about regular old landscaping timbers? are those treated? the ones i got at lowe's last weekend didn't look like they were..."

I wanted to use landscaping timber but the stuff at Lowes and Home Depot are treated

Quote :

"You could try Capital City Lumber over on Beryl Road."

I heard this place only sells in big bulk. Anyone go there to get a few pieces of lumber?

5/4/2010 11:24:01 AM

I've only bought hardwood there and i pretty much had to buy a minimum of one board that could not be cut into two equal pcs of 6 or 8 ft. Cant remember.

I highly doubt that they only sell in bulk though for any of their lumber. Correct me if i'm wrong. That just doesnt make much sense to me.

5/4/2010 5:09:27 PM

I had the same concerns and since cedar is so expensive I made a compromise. Used treated wood for my garden bed, but lined the inside walls with plastic like CalledToArms reccomends. Since the concerns about arsenic are already pretty small, I was happy with that.

also forklift pallets are basically free and often made of hardwoods. (I got some from a hardware store for $1 each) You'd have to do extra work to make the sides tall/long enough but there's no beating the cost.

5/4/2010 10:12:36 PM

I ended up going to Capital City Lumber. Great place. Prices were a little bit higher than Lowes or Home Depot but they had an excellent selection of lumber.

I ended up buying ten 1x6x8 cedar to make an 4'x8' raised bed 18" high

5/4/2010 10:40:43 PM

use dead trees, and u can lace em together like the fences at civil war battlefields, looks better than lumber

5/5/2010 11:58:52 AM

that's a big hole to fill...have fun with that

5/5/2010 12:43:49 PM