What's up everyone? Welcome back to the Epic Gardening podcast. We're doing a couple

solo episodes this week so I hope you are ready to hear only my voice for a

little bit. The question of the day, what are we answering,

is, are galvanized steel garden beds safe? It's a question I've gotten quite a bit and a lot more over the past year as I've

started to sell the Birdies garden products. So what I thought I would do is answer this

question in typical Epic Gardening fashion where we really try to

understand the underlying principles beneath it. Okay, so the short answer is yes they are safe for gardening use and the

reason why is what we're about to dive into. So first of all you have to understand

what galvanized steel actually is. So galvanization is the process of bonding a

layer of zinc to the surface of steel or other ferrous metals like iron, what this process does is it prevents the steel or iron

from rusting when it's in contact with moisture.

And so as you can imagine in a raised bed scenario it's oftentimes in contact with

moisture especially on the inside because the moist soil is pressed up against it.

So most galvanized steel is made with a hot dip process. Sheet steel, which is either corrugated,

aka wavy or smooth, will be fully submerged in molten zinc and that creates a uniform

layer on the steel surface.

Sometimes that metal is then cooled to allow the material to fully bond and then it's dipped again.

Not all galvanized steel is actually coated in pure zinc though. Some galvanized metal is hot treated with an alloy.

Allu zinc and aluminum and zinc coating, which is commonly used for hot dipping,

is actually the one that the raised beds that I sell, Bertie's Garden products.

That's the galvanization method that they use.

The aluminum creates an exterior layer that protects even the zinc and then the zinc is protecting the steel.

...