In parks, courtyards or flower beds, you sometimes see some dark, slightly rough wood, which is used to lay paths, enclose flower pools or serve as landscape steps. Many of these timbers are anticorrosive sleepers that once undertook important tasks under the railway tracks. After their retirement, they found a new place to use in the garden. One of the most important advantages is that they are both insect and ant resistant. This is not accidental, but stems from the deep anti-corrosion treatment they experienced in their "previous lives" to adapt to the harsh railway environment.
Railway test: why deep corrosion prevention is needed?
Imagine the working environment of sleepers on the railway: heavy trains are rolled day after day, exposed to the wind, sun and rain. Especially, they are buried in gravel (ballast) all year round, so the environment is relatively bad. The commonly used materials for sleepers, such as pine, are soft and rich in nutrients. In a humid environment, they are ideal targets for all kinds of decaying fungi, wood boring insects (such as termites and beetle larvae) and ants to build nests.
If the sleepers are not specially treated, they will soon rot, crack or be eaten away by insects in this environment, resulting in track deformation, affecting driving safety, and need to be replaced very frequently, which is very expensive. Therefore, the core secret of making sleepers "prolong life" is to carry out deep anti-corrosion treatment.
"Longevity secret" of sleepers: anti-corrosion treatment process
The core objective of the anti-corrosion treatment of sleepers is to immerse the anti-corrosion oil into the wood as deep and evenly as possible to form a lasting protective layer. After such treatment, sleepers with a depth of 13mm under the wood surface are soaked with anti-corrosion oil. These preservative oils can effectively kill or inhibit the fungi that cause wood decay, and can also poison or repel insects and ants that attempt to decay wood.
From railway track to Garden: continuation and amplification of the advantage of insect and ant prevention
When these anti-corrosion sleepers that have experienced the severe test of railway are "transferred" to the garden, their strong anti-corrosion and insect prevention ability has become an extremely valuable advantage, especially in dealing with the common problems of insects and ants in the garden:
1. facing the soil and humidity directly: for garden applications, whether they are used as flower boxes, paved paths or retaining walls, sleepers are likely to be in direct contact with the soil or to be in a relatively humid environment in the garden for a long time (such as watering, rainwater and surface moisture). However, humidity is the primary factor inducing wood decay and attracting insect ants (especially termites and some wet loving moths).
2. long term resistance to wood borers: common wood borers in the garden, such as longicorn beetle larvae and pink beetles, like to drill holes in the wood to eat and destroy the wood structure. The anticorrosive oil inside the anticorrosive sleeper can effectively kill the larvae or adults of these pests and prevent them from settling down and reproducing in the wood. Moreover, the surface of the sleepers treated with antiseptic treatment is also soaked with antiseptic oil, which makes them harder to be eaten by wood borers.
3. strong resistance to termites and ants: This is a very prominent advantage of anticorrosive sleepers in gardens.
Although termites and common ants themselves do not feed directly on wood, they like to dig nest passages in soft, wet or decayed wood. This activity accelerates the physical destruction of wood and provides access to other pests. Due to the existence of anticorrosive oil, the wood of anticorrosive sleeper is not easy to decay and soften. At the same time, the environment is not conducive to the survival and nesting of ants, thus reducing the possibility of ants settling in or under the sleeper.
4. inhibition of decaying fungi: the long-term humid environment plus organic matter (wood itself) is a hotbed for fungal growth. Fungi decompose wood, making it soft, discolored and lose strength. The anti-corrosion oil effectively inhibits the growth of a variety of decaying fungi, ensures the structural stability and durability of sleepers in the humid environment of gardens, and indirectly reduces the chance of attracting other insects and ants due to decay (insects and ants often prefer decayed corks).
Pine: a common choice
Many of our common anti-corrosion sleepers use pine (such as southern pine, Mongolian Scotch pine, etc.). Pine itself grows fast, has relatively rich resources, good processing performance and straight texture. Although its natural anti-corrosion and insect resistance is poor, it is precisely because of its wooden structure (such as large pores) that it is easier for the anti-corrosion oil to penetrate evenly and deeply. After high-quality pressure immersion treatment, its anti-corrosion and insect resistance performance can be improved qualitatively and become very reliable and durable. This is why pine wood has become one of the main raw materials for preservative treated wood (including sleepers and landscape wood).
epilogue
The old railway sleepers in the garden bear the heavy sense of industrial history, and their rough and plain appearance adds a unique natural wild interest to the garden. But the more important value is that they have obtained strong internal protection through strict anti-corrosion treatment process. This protective power enables them to easily cope with the humid soil environment in the garden, effectively resist the gnawing of moths, and in particular, form a strong barrier against the destructive termites and ants who like to dig holes in rotten wood. Choosing anti-corrosion sleepers for garden construction is not only an environmental protection measure for recycling, but also a high-quality material that is both durable and equipped with an "insect and ant shield", so that the garden landscape can be renewed for a long time. The next time you see them in the garden, in addition to appreciating their unique features, don't forget the practical protection they provide silently.
