HelpfulGardener.com

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum and pretty new to gardening as well so I apologize if this is a stupid question! We moved into our home 2 years ago and the previous owners were very into gardening. They introduced us to the square foot method and we've really gotten into the gardening spirit since! Anyway, they had a row of raspberry bushes along the fence line of the property. We also place our compost bin along the fence line. Our neighbour recently replaced the fence with pressure treated wood. It's a very nice fence but do you think this would have an impact our raspberries... would you still eat them? And what about the compost? Thank you for your advice!

Not much of a problem. Most pressure treated wood these days are treated with copper compounds that are considered not toxic. You might want to prune your raspberry bushes enough that the actual berries aren't directly touching the wood. Likewise, move your compost bin out a few inches so that your compostable materials aren't directly touching the wood.

That is reassuring! Thank you for your help!

Yeah, I don't think pressure treated wood is supposed to leach much at all. However, be aware that the copper used to treat wood, while a plant nutrient in small/appropriate quantities, can be very toxic to plants at higher quantities. If it's some cheap lumber and your plants start to fail after some weather, I would be suspicious.

That being said, I know plenty of people build their raised beds with pressure treated lumber and never have issues. Personally I wouldn't, but I also don't mind replacing my beds every 5-10 years when the untreated cedar rots.