Tips on how to prep an outdoor wooden planter box

Hi all:

Need a little guidance on outdoor wooden planter boxes.

We’ve made two boxes for outside, made of a combination of redwood and pressure-treated wood. How do we make the wood last for as long as possible?

Some folks have told us to clean the wood with a water/bleach solution, let dry, treat the inside of the box with a sealer, and then attach plastic sheeting with galvanized nails/staples before adding the soil and plants. Others have told us to ditch the plastic sheeting but do the rest of the treatment prior to putting in the soil.

These are flower boxes so there won’t be anything edible. Any tips on what is the right thing to do to prep these boxes so the wood doesn’t decay?

Also, the boxes have no bottoms, so I thought we would put some landscape fabric on the bottom to hold the soil in.

All thoughts welcome! I just don’t want us to go through a bunch of effort and then have the wood decay quickly. It seems to me that adding the plastic sheeting is inexpensive and something we can do fairly quickly, just cutting the plastic sheeting (3.5 mils thick) to fit and stapling them inside the box.

TIA!

I can offer our experience with our raised beds: ditch the landscape fabric and use hardware cloth instead. We have horrible issues with gophers, and so far, the hardware cloth has served us well.

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I’m a little confused on your box bottoms and/or how drainage will occur. Too much drainage will encourage the soil drying out quickly, not enough drainage will encourage water logged soil, mildew, and faster decaying of wood.

The box would rest directly on the ground (gravel on top of soil). We have an irrigation system into the boxes.

Hopefully (?) that will balance things out in terms of too much/little water.