Audrey has been in my garden for six years. She was my first raised garden bed — cedar and galvanized steel, bought off Facebook Marketplace from a builder for around $250, before this channel even existed. Today she comes out.
Time, heat and Florida rain finally got her. The back corner barely sees the sun and never dried out. The front corner sits right where the rain tank overflows. Both rotted through at the bottom. The cedar wasn't the problem — the weather was.
Six years for around $250 works out to about $40 a year. I'm not mad about that. She gave us food, and she taught us that loofah is the most resilient thing I've ever grown.
This is Part 1: the plant rescue, the teardown, the rotted wood up close, what a garden bed looks like once the walls come off, and what's left of the logs I buried underneath. Part 2 is what goes in her spot.
⏱️ CHAPTERS
0:00 Audrey has been a great garden bed
0:38 Six years and around $250
1:10 Plant rescue: the betel and the peppers
1:20 Tearing her out
3:51 Just rotten — and this was cedar
4:02 The pressure-treated table that isn't rotting
4:42 A garden bed with the walls off
5:05 What's underneath: the buried logs
🪵 WHAT SIX YEARS DID
Bottom rails rotted through where they sat on wet ground · rot around the screws at the top of the shady back side · soil that held the shape of the bed with the walls gone · the logs I buried underneath six years ago, down to a few wood chips · perlite that worked its way all the way to the bottom.
🪚 WHY CEDAR ROTS IN FLORIDA
I expected cedar to last a lot longer. My neighbor, who's a woodworker, set me straight: the cedar isn't the problem, the weather is. Here it's hot, then wet, then hot again. The wood soaks up moisture, dries out, swells and shrinks, and over time that pushes the screws loose and the bed loses its stability. The parts of Audrey that stayed wet the longest are the parts that went first.
🌱 WHAT THE SOIL LOOKED LIKE AFTER 6 YEARS
When I set this bed up, I buried logs in the bottom. Six years later there's nothing left of them but a few wood chips. And there's perlite all the way down at the bottom — I know I didn't put it in that deep the first time around. With the walls gone, the soil still held the shape of the bed. I'm saving as much of it as I can for the next one.
🪵 THE PRESSURE-TREATED TABLE
Side note: I built a table out of pressure-treated wood about four years ago. It sits downslope from all the garden beds, so water collects around its feet — and it isn't rotting, even where I cut it into the ground. The only soft spot is where the soap used to sit. Not a perfect build, but after four years it's holding up.
📍 I'm in zone 9b, Northeast Florida. Hot, then wet, then hot again — that's what this wood was up against. Any date I give you is mine, not yours. The methods travel — the calendar doesn't.
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🌻 ABOUT MICHELLE IN THE MEADOW
I'm growing on a 1/4 acre suburban lot in Northeast Florida, Zone 9b. We have more than 80 individual fruit trees and shrubs and more than a dozen different kinds of annuals growing on this property. The slopes make for some interesting ways to garden, but we're trying to make the best of it.
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