Eco friendly stain for Cedar wood in Vegetable garden?
Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at
7:10 am
I’m looking to treat cedar wood for my raised vegetable garden before I fill in with dirt to help preserve it. I’m wondering if using wood stain is going to be a bad idea as I don’t want chemicals leaching into the garden contaminating the wood. Any suggestions on what to use or if I should just leave it?
Filed under: Vegetable Gardening
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Just leave it. You used cedar and paid the high prices for it in the first place because it’s rot-resistant. If you want to stain the outside to keep it looking like cedar, go ahead but I wouldn’t touch the inside and don’t slop stain all over the place. To preserve the cedar colour to some extent you can also clean the wood every year with a pressure washer though you must watch the pressure with those because cedar is so soft you can eat it away if you’re not careful. If you don’t mind the grey colour it will weather to, just leave it and that’s what I’d do. I don’t know of anything that will effectively seal the wood from moisture that you would want to end up in your vegetables, especially when in a garden there will be moisture present almost all the time. Not saying there might not be one, I just haven’t heard of it.