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Hey, I have a lifetime of gardening behind me, and I'm shocked that Sunset missed something so obvious about his bad idea. The steel would heat up so much in the hot sun that the edges of the beds would dry out, and any roots that grew near them would cook. The photo shows the planters shaded by fully-grown plants in mid-to-late summer, but where I live the planters would have cooked the soil well before the plants could get big enough to provide shade.

Really dumb idea. Use wood, or if you can afford it, use multiple galvanized steel livestock troughs (knock out the bottoms, or drill with holes. They look much cooler... literally:

http://www.penick.net/digging/?p=224

love the look!

one of my coworkers made her own raised bed out of stacked cinder blocks. very afforadable and she could make the shape she wanted (and even take it apart and rebuild it in the future). the blocks can acquire a nice patina over time, too.

Forestdweller is correct about that type of steel heating up too much for plants. (But those galvanized steel troughs -- note how much lighter they are, by the way -- look awesome!)

The rebar is a nice ecological idea for training plants though.

Thanks, Forestdweller, for making that good point. The heat could be an issue in certain climates - although a horticulturalist friend of mine points out that the heating could be an advantage for growing summer crops like tomatoes here in San Francisco. He also added, though, that there might be an issue with chemicals from the metal leaching into the soil. Maybe the best solution, if you like the look, is to line the beds with plywood?

I do love those galvanized troughs as planters too.

Thanks!

-Susie

As far as I know, plywood also contains chemicals that can leach into your garden soil. Most gardeners like untreated cedar, if you can afford it, because it weathers well and doesn't leach chemicals the way that railroad ties and other woods do.

looks cool, but seriously, "scrap" metal? Even if you are fortunate enough to find a supply of "scrap" plate steel, the chances of it just happening to be perfectly sized for planter boxes is probably zero. So by the time you screw around with getting it cut, you're into it for a bunch of money, which, IMO, defeats the entire point of using "scrap".
Because FYI, steel, any steel, is like 99% recycled content anyway.

Ah, this reminds me of the spoons I used to make out of that diamond-patterned stock and rebar. Always fun to reuse old industrial things.

Steel isn't going to harm you any. The most you'll get is some extra rust flaking off into the soil - which is just more iron!

The only thing I would worry about is old industrial paint that might be on it, because who knows what is in that. If the steel is old enough, you can probably just scrub it off. Otherwise a power-tool-attached wire brush (easy to find at any Home Depot) would take the crud off.

And as someone pointed out - these would probably be more helpful if you're trying to grow in a soggy, not so warm area.

Splatgirl - if you're lucky enough to live near a reaaaaally nice scrapyard, sometimes they'll cut stuff for you for a small charge (somewhere around $10 to $50, depending on how much they like you).

So they may not have spent much at all, especially if some of the stock was already cut when they found it.

Moral of the story - take your scrapyard workers cookies and get on their good side. ;)

Looks like a great garden but what is going to happen when will most likely have water restrictions in California with a garden like this?