I’m seeing less wood and more sheet metal raised beds being used for online gardening.
When did the trend of using raised sheet metal beds and potting mix instead of real soil start?
It is primarily owed to the heavier weight (and hence shipping cost) of true soil containing sands. Notice that the word “mix” in the term “potting mix” can have two interpretations: (1) the bag contains a mixture of ingredients (2) these are ingredients to use in making a complete mix.
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Right now it’s cheaper (time and money) to buy a metal bed (or use an old trough or similar) than to buy wood or wood raised bed.
If I used the least expensive wood it would still be more expensive and rot quickly. If I use treated wood it leaches chemicals. If I use logs (which I end up doing because I like the look) it’s a lot of time.
I don’t know about potting mix. Getting soil, potting mix, or dirt to fill a raised bed has been problematic for me. Mostly expensive! But also full of weed seeds or 1/2 woodchips or really alkaline (like pH 8.5).
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I started using raised beds when my back started hurting lol
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I go with galvanized fire rings or pre-made Vego beds. I mix my own soil with coco coir, perlite, and box store tree/shrub soil. Add fertilizer starting the second year.
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Think a lot of it is the online shops too, a flat pack metal bed looks tidy in a photo and ships easily. The pure potting mix bit does puzzle me though, it must shrink a fair bit after a year or two and then you’re buying more to top up.
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The very wealthy people I work for are still using wood for the most part. When it rots the contractor gets to do it again. Potting soil is not the usual filler- not peat-lite anyway, that is pro-mix types with peat moss and perlite. They use a mix the yards sell for about $55 a cubic yard made of blended sand and composted yard waste. They often charge arborists and landscapers to dump their chips and clippings and turn the piles with heavy equipment to keep the piles hot enough to sterilize it. .
The result is a somewhat alkaline mix of very high OM content that can grow almost anything but blueberries. Most importantly, not many viable weed seeds.
My method follows the old French intensive gardening guidelines where you are trying to create the loosest soil possible. Wide mounds 4-5’ across without walls. The theory was that you are creating the conditions of a landslide- the instability of the mounds keeps the soil exceptionally well aerated and the mounding creates drainage and early heating of the soil. The soil that falls during the season is shoveled back up every spring.
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That’s one of the reasons I built my most recent raised bed higher. It’s a lot easier to weed that way. In this pic I’m still in the process of filling it. The bottom 2/3-3/4 is just a mix of partially composted (cut last fall) wood chips and dirt (from when the chips were scraped up so I could seed grass).
I filled the holes with “spare” rocks (from when planting trees) and covered each with a handful of cement. That should keep dirt from collecting there and letting weeds grow.
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