Built a raised bed with treated lumber and my tomatoes are yellowing

I put together a 4x8 foot raised bed last month using pressure treated pine from Home Depot and now my tomato plants are looking sick. A guy at the local nursery said the copper in the treatment can mess with sensitive plants if the soil touches it directly. I lined the inside with heavy plastic but maybe that wasn't enough. Anyone else had issues with treated lumber and veggies?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_avery9d ago

Heard this exact story from my buddy Dave last summer. He built these fancy cedar raised beds but used pressure treated for the corners and frame. His tomatoes started yellowing like two weeks after planting and he was freaking out. He tried everything, more water, less water, different fertilizer. Finally he ripped out all the soil near the treated wood and replaced it with regular dirt. The plants perked back up in like a week. The copper stuff in the treatment definitely leaches out even with plastic liner I guess. Now he just uses untreated lumber for anything he's gonna grow food in and replaces it every few years. The plastic liner can tear or seep through over time so it's not a perfect fix.

murphy.linda9d ago

That Dave story sounds pretty familiar, actually. I was reading this article from a gardening blog a few months back where they tested soil near aged pressure treated wood and found copper levels were still pretty high even after a few years. The author figured the plastic liner idea works okay in theory but with temperature changes and all that weight on it, the plastic gets brittle and cracks pretty quick. My own garden beds are just regular cedar and I've been lucky so far, but I do swap out the boards every couple of seasons when they start rotting. Your buddy's experience with the tomato yellowing is a good warning though, sometimes you just gotta go with the simpler option even if it means more upkeep.