Gophers and raised beds
I am new to organic gardening and am in the planning stages of my vegetable garden. I want raised beds and have been told I need to use untreated lumber? We have gophers and they push up dirt everywhere, I was told to put fencing down in the bed first then soil over the top and the gophers would not be able to push up under my plants or eat my plants. My concern is the fencing will rust is this going to leach chemicles into my healthy organic vegetables? I really would like to do this right from the beginning rather than have to redo it like so many other things in life.
Use some kind of galvanized wire mesh. I have found that welded wire lasts far longer -- many years, in fact -- whereas hardware cloth rusts away quite quickly. I used 1/2 x 1 inch welded wire mesh for the flooring in my wild animal cages. For the comfort of the animals' feet, I buried the wire. It was still solid after 10 years. (And that was 10 years of Oregon rain! 
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The water pipes that bring water to your home are probably galvanized. It's a zinc coating, and not something I worry about causing problems if it were to leach into the soil. Heavy zinc deposits are problematic in soil, but they usually aren't the result of leaching from galvanized metals. JMO.
)The water pipes that bring water to your home are probably galvanized. It's a zinc coating, and not something I worry about causing problems if it were to leach into the soil. Heavy zinc deposits are problematic in soil, but they usually aren't the result of leaching from galvanized metals. JMO.