can i use an old shower curtain as a liner for a raised bed?

my neighbor was tearing down his fence to replace it. i salvaged his wood and made a raised bed that i plan to plant lilies. is it safe to use an old shower curtain liner as a bed liner ?
thanks
brooke

Only if you make sure to allow for drainage as the shower curtain will hold water, especially if it covers both bottom and sides of the bed.

The moon is right, you would need to take your garden fork and puncture the shower curtain all over If the lily bulbs will rot because there will be too much water held in the soil, I would only ever use your idea IF I wanted to make a wetland garden or use the curtain to line a pathway before I poured gravel on the pathway that was dug out.
You never said why you want to line the bottom of the bed, IF it is because you never dug the soil before you made your raised bed, the best thing you could do is lay down half inch thick layer of news paper or cardboard, this will help kill of any weeds /grass etc and it will rot down, most roots will grow through this layer as it rots down too, hope this helps you out.
Good luck, WeeNel.

you could use the shower curtain for a bog garden though. not for the lilies, as they mentioned above.

I put the wood down directly on top of the St auggie grass (looks like a deck almost). Then I built up the sides so it's like a box with bottom and sides. I was worried if I put the soil in the box without a liner the grass would shoot up thru the cracks in the wood. My gut was telling me to definitely punch holes in it but I didn't know if the plastic material of the shower liner would leach something harmfull into the soil. I like the idea of the newspaper/ cardboard tho. I could put herds and edibles in the bed with the lilies without the worry of plastics leaching into the food.

Since you made a box with a bottom, the first choice would be to put something over the grass, under the wood, because yes, ST Aug grass will jump right through the cracks. You do need to take care using paper and cardboard with wood however, especially down here in the south due to Formosa termites.Check out this link from UFL.

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/mg064

Sorry Brooke, I never realised you had made a wood floor inside the box,
I would remove this flooring and just use the cardboard / newspapers, this will rot down as the grass under it dies down, OR spray a weed killer onto the grass then cover it with the cardboard and paper, the killer will re act to lack of light and air as the roots are weakened by the killer. The garden center should tell you the safest killer to use if you want to go down that route to grow the lily's you would require a bed to be at the very least 10 -12 inches deep, most lily bulbs are placed in the soil about 6-7 inched under the soil for stability, for protection against heat / cold, and allows the bulbs to settle down and gather nutrients, water and a good root area. Any food plants will require the same depth or deeper for any roots to go down, the safest thing would be to take your time and use your spade to dig up the grass, IF you flip the grass over so the green is bottom and roots are at the top, this causes the grass to die down as the lack of light cant keep the green top growing, when I was making new beds I always lifted the grass and stored it upside down till it died then used the dead vegetation to bulk up the soil in the new bed, but I placed it under the top soil to make sure it rotted down well.

Hope all these ideas give you food for thought and you can soon get your new bed started off, just remember if you don't get it right at the start, you end up with more problems and some people get put of growing things as they think they cant do it properly. don't give up, enjoy and grow all you fancy so you learn what is good and what is not worth re-trying.
Good Luck. WeeNel.