"More Secured" garden? - Rail road ties

My garden was already in place when I bought the house, however the previous owner needs to learn how to install a fence.

We have LOTS of rabbits, tree rats (Gray Squirrels), crows, and some deer, and the only animals that my current fence keeps out are my dogs. All the animals just go under the fence (deer typically stay out and eat everything else in the yard)

Due to the placement of my garden I'm considering lining the whole garden in landscaping ties and then attaching the fence to the ties... this should keep the buggers from getting under the fence (burying them about 2 inches or so).

Will there be any issues with this? Do I have to be concerned about chemicals leaching into the ground and affecting the garden?

I don't know about the chemicals, but the animals will get in unless you have a very tight meshed fence. The rabbits and squirells run right thru regular chain link fencing.

I really don't think it would bother any of the garden plants, if you look in our part of the country they still use treated poles for light lines and people here will put flowers and stuff around them and they have the same kind of treatment that RR ties have. I have not seen any problems doing that here.

Thanks, the fence is tight enough that they won't make it through but they go underneath it without trouble... hopefully adding the ties will help... we shall see :P

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Landscape timbers yes, but RR ties, no. They are soaked with oily, black creosote and smell really bad. You will smell oil every time you work in your garden.

If you get old ones that the RR has pulled fron the tracks they won't smell. I know cause I have a few myself. I don't use them around the garden cause at the time I got them I didn't have a garden then. I used mine to place down the drive way but they didn't smell.

I have a couple of hundred of them in my landscaping here and they do not smell. Whatever there was in them that smelled and preserved the wood was long gone when the RR removed them and they were sold to the garden center.

I agree with Juney. I have used RR ties for 2 decades without ANY problems. Basically all of the creosote is gone from the outside by the time you buy them. My plants have THRIVED in planters made from RR ties.

I'm sure someone has studied this and it is a known fact that it either does or does not give out chemicals that are absorbed by veggies. Hmmmmm
I'm not up to the task of researching this. Any volunteers?

Let me clarify my post to say that I only grow flowers. So, that may affect they way you read my answer!

Mine are only around the flower or shrub gardens too. I know that the old way of preserving landscape ties (left a greenish tinge) was arsenic. I don't know what they use now.