Alright this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
I have another exciting episode for you.
One of the questions I get the most is hey John what did you treat your wood with and
I used cedar and redwood to prevent the rot.
That's something that's natural that's not going to possibly cause problems with the
soil or actually leeching into the soil then you eating the plants grown in there and then
you're consuming that stuff.
So for that reason I don't necessarily recommend standard paints or even standard wood stains
that are used for decks because the stuff can actually be toxic and contain something
things that you wouldn't want to eat when you're growing your plants in it, you may
end up also consuming it.
So at the time I did a lot of research, I used a soy based stain.
I don't think the stuff I used is available anymore.
It did work well at the time and it appears to still be working alright, although it wasn't
effective at preventing mold from growing.
But it has seemed to prevent the wood from deteriorating or rotting.
So if I had to do it over, I might use a different product.
But since that time, I've learned about another product that I'm going to share with you guys
today that I did have in a past episode that I learned about the national hardware and
garden show.
What that stuff is, is this stuff right here.
It's called the eco-wood treatment.
It comes in two sizes.
They have a small and a large.
The small size here will cover one gallon and is about 150 square feet.
This is about 5 gallons worth and it covers approximately 750 square feet.
You might be thinking hey John, how is that a gallon in there, and how's that 5 gallons
in there?
It's very simply.
These are actually concentrates so inside the package here what you're going to find
is a little package of stuff.
Basically from what I was told these are basically powdered up minerals and this is a family
formula that's been used for over 60 years to protect wood on docks and they got some
hard environments in docks.
Literally the wood on docks is getting wet all the time.
So in a raised bed situation shouldn't be a problem.
So these are just minerals in some formulation, they wouldn't disclose the actual ingredients
when I talked to them there but I feel that they're fairly safe, they're just some powdered
up stuff.
So how you use this stuff is actually you use this and actually dilute it with water
yourself.
So what we're going to do today is we're actually going to use two of these smaller sizes here.
What we're going to do is mix it into a premeasured two gallons of water.
So there's one packet that's for one gallon and then we're going to go ahead and use another
small packet for a total of two gallons.
They have nice reusable bags, so you could reuse these bags to store your seeds in.
Alright so that's dropped in there, next we need to stir it up, so I got a handy dandy
piece of branch here.
Alright we're brewing up the witches brew, actually the eco-wood treatment today.
On the Growing Your Greens show.
Alright, we're getting some vortex action here, who needs a blender when I got an air?
Alright man, I think that looks pretty cool.
Now this stuff does kind of look like a dirty yellow/brown, kind of like pee color after
you've eaten some strawberries maybe.
But it looks like it's nice a stirred up.
Now there's a few ways you can apply the eco-wood treatment.
They say you can actually just use the paintbrush and paint it on, which is probably not the
most effective way.
The next way they recommend is actually you could use some kind of sprayer, whether it's
a backpack sprayer.
This is the standard sprayer, you'd spray your compost tea on your leaves.
So you'd just use a standard sprayer to spray it on the wood being treated.
Or the best way that I'm going to do it today is do the soak method.
Now the soak method is especially important when you're going to use it in raised beds
because you want this protectant to seal and coat every different possible surface.
Because guess what?
The place you miss brushing or spraying on, whether it's the front side, the back side,
or the cracks or the crevices, that's where the rot may occur.
Now this product is said to make your wood fungus and mold resistant and also protect
your wood.
One of these side benefits or maybe negative things maybe depending on your views is that
this will turn your wood a greyish color so that's like that nice grayish weathered look
If you want it.
If you don't want that look then you might want to look for another product that is going
to be different from this one.
So I don't have any raised beds that I'm going to be treating today.
The raised beds behind me are actually made out of a plastic that I'm using here.
But what we're going to do today is we're going to treat a planter, so whether you're
going to grow in a little planter, you made yourself or whether you're going to treat
your raised beds you should definitely use this product.
Now the planter I'm going to treat today is a special planter it's not any planter.
The one area of a planter that will basically rot out first, always the bottom.
Right there.
Now why is the bottom always going to rot out first, because guess what when you water,
the water goes in the bottom, and not necessarily collects in the sides to much and it rots
the bottom organization of your pots out.
This pot is a special pot, this is from Susquehanna Garden Concepts at sgardenconcept.com, made
in the USA, made out of cedar wood here and the bottom is plastic so this is a very intelligent
design.
They also have some waist height raised bed kits which are really cool and other sizes
available.
I think even some of these guys might be available on Amazon.com.
The plastic is manufactured from 100% recycled materials.
So definitely really cool.
While the plastic won't rot, the wood, although this is cedar, may still rot.
So that's why we're going to treat it today.
So whether you're treating your containers made out of wood, whether you're treating
pine, cedar, cedar, redwood.
It's always best to treat your wood because it'll delay the amount of time it does take
before it does rot.
Everything will rot over time, but this can help prevent that.
So I guess next because we got this mixture here we're just going to go ahead and pour
this into our cement mixing tub and this is going to work pretty good because we are,
and look at that color on it man.
It's a nice yellow kind of dark pee color actually.
So those are all the minerals in there changing the color of the water.
And once again I said you could paint or spray it on, but in this case because this is a
small container we're literally going to put it in here like this.
Check it out, the bottom is totally submerged.
We're going to count to ten.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Hey that's my voice changing because I'm going through puberty.
Then were just going to rotate a little bit and we're going to let this that seep into
this section.
Then we're going to count to ten again and we're going to continue to rotate this and
guess what as we continue to rotate around the wood treatment it will soak in to each
and every panel get between all those joints and everything and really protect this wood.
Now once you're done treating it going to take this out.
The color of this will change, it's a nice cedar looking wood, it's going to turn into
that graying look but don't be concerned, your wood is now protected in a non-toxic
method using minerals.
So one of the things I always look at before buying any product or before showing it to
you guys is I check the reviews, especially if I don't have any experience with this product.
This is the first time using this eco wood treatment.
I don't really know about it so I had to take it at face value when the owner actually talking
to me about this stuff and I gave him like twenty questions.
I think I was at least standing at his booth for like half hour forty five minute just
nailing him with all kinds of questions.
Because these are the things that I know you guys might ask me and I nailed them enough
so that I'm definitely fairly convinced that this is a fairly non-toxic product.
Plus also check the reviews before you buy anything.
The internet is a the wealth of information and the reviews for the most part actually
except for a few which may have been a staged are all good on this product.
So I think that's definitely a makes a high confidence with this.
Another thing is that this one is made in Canada up in BC yo yo what's up all BCers
up there in British Columbia.
BC's great.
Of all the places I've been in Canada, I like BC the most so far.
No offense to you Saskatchewans out there.
But this is a eco-wood treatment you could learn more at their website, eco-woodtreatment.com.
You probably can order it from them off their website but the other thing that's really
cool that this is also available on other online major retailers such as home depot.
So yes this is also very available and also very easy to ship because you're not shipping
liquids.
Just make sure you mix it up really good.
Wow, I can smell the cedar wood here just soaking up this water.
So you know if you do you want to do your raised bed boards which can be rather long
what I would make it some kind a jig so I would make basically using some wood or some
scraps I'd make like a little, I'd get some plastic.
some plastic sheeting and make a little trough than you know make a two edges or four edges
and make like a long raised bed that you're going to basically a putting the plastic sheeting
so that you can dunk in long pieces of wood into this.
So basically you're making like a little aquarium.
And that way you'll be able to soak your wood that you'll be the best protected to protect
your wood against rot, mold, and funguses.
So you know I don't know this is looks like it's working pretty good and only time will
tell how the eco-wood treatment works for me.
At this time I'm currently recommending it because you know it seems like it's a non
-toxic product, it's met my a rigorous questioning of the owner, and the reviews online say it's
great.
So stay tuned for future episodes where you show you guys how this is looking, how it's
working and any future information that I may have on this product.
If you have use the eco-wood treatment hey post down below or share your experiences
down below with the eco-wood treatment if you do decide to use it.
So once again my show is about giving you got option so you can grow food in a non-toxic
environment.
Now you know my application for this is for gardening because gardening you got the soil
coming in with it, the water coming in contact with the wood, but this is also used to like
you know spray on wood houses to protect the outside, on docks, on decks.
This stuff has infinite never uses to protect your virgin untreated wood.
It's been actually several days since I filmed that episode to show you guys how to use the
eco-wood treatment and now ii want to see the results.
This is a standard of British Columbia red cedar wood.
Once again this is the Susquehanna Garden Concepts container once again this one actually
has the plastic bottom and we did not treat this one to show you guys the difference.
Now you guys can see the difference in the treated and untreated.
Here's the treated, here's the untreated.
The treated actually kind has like a grayish brown tinge actually oh and there's a moth.
Actually I like this a lot actually, I think it looks really cool and as long as it works
like it says it does and it protects the wood from the inside out, because once again we
did dunk this in there, I think this is an excellent way to preserve your wood until
I find something out that's more natural and hopefully I'm going to trial this and see
if my wood rots or not.
So far so good but it hasn't even been that long.
So hope you guys enjoy this episode to buy these eco-wood treatment is available at places
like HomeDepot.com it and a post below the video to let me know if you try it and what
you think of it.
So hopefully you guys enjoy this episode learning more about a natural wood treatment to preserve
the wood you use in your garden that's not going to affect or put chemicals into your
food.
Once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
We'll see you next time and remember keep on growing.