Cheap Source Of Pine Bark?

[jimlau]

Is there a cheap source for small pine bark bits? And does the bark have to be pine, or can it be for succulents?

Thanks.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Yes.

 

[jimlau]

Yes.

Yes to which of the 3 questions? Bark for succulents?

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Cheap sources are trees, or bags you'd find at a hardware store or garden center. I paid about 5 euros for 20 liters of pine bark chips. In some places, pet stores have the good stuff as well.
You generally would want conifer wood, so pine can be good, but fir and cedar seem to work well too! Do not fall for beech chips (waste from vinegar production) because they suck, but they're darn cheap, five to six times cheaper than pine bark. Those have the life sucked out of them and they act as a problematic soil compound that you'd want to avoid.

Succulents hardly make wood, but I believe some of them are grown in pine wood chips just like some orchids are.. Those chips are usually pretty expensive compared to your run of the mill stuff you can get at pet stores or hardware stores and nobody knows why, except the guys selling it with a 400% mockup. The pet store stuff is sometimes sterilized with gamma radiation, which isn't harmful to you or your plants (unless you stand in front of the radiation source, don't gamma sterilize at home), so it will be less biologically active at the start. Grab some forest soil and dump it in the bag, wet it, and forget about it for a couple weeks. Should be back to normal.

If you're going to buy it online, make sure you don't pick the dyed bark flakes, because that paint is going to be a paint in the ass. I've read about a couple people making that mistake, who are now left with cubic tons of the stuff.

 

[dbonsaiw]

pet stores have the good stuff as well.

This is surprisingly true. I noticed this when shopping for food for my son's pets. They have a number of products that are cheaper than their gardening counterparts, from pine to coco coir to sand.

make sure you don't pick the dyed bark flakes

Ditto. I've done this with dyed mulch and those colors run.

 

[WNC Bonsai]

Go to Lowes or Home Depot and look for the big bags of composted pine bark. Let it dry and then sift out the fines and big chunks.

 

[sevan]

In my area Lowes sells shredded pine bark labeled as a soil conditioner, usually in the row of large bagged soils near the end, but before the mulch. I think the brand is Evergreen. My nearby Home Depot doesn't carry it. I live in Georgia, which is a major producer of pine products (lumber, pulp, etc.), so I don't know if that makes any difference on availability.

 

[Joe Dupre']

I've been using Hapi-Gro from Lowes for 8 years. It's listed as 100% organic compost on the bag.

 

[horibonsai]

If you want bulk, get pine fines from your local nursery or mulch suppliers. Most will do a pickup truck of 1/2 cubic yards. Some municipalities will provide free mulch if you pick it up. You'll have to sift these. The paid pine fines are about the size of a soil conditioner branded Evergreen from Lowe's. You can straight use pine fines without sifting.

 

[WNC Bonsai]

Whatever you buy make sure it is composted not fresh bark. Fresh bark has much more readily leachable organic carbon that bacteria will glom onto and digest but they also need nitrogen so will compete with your trees for it. With composted bark much of that readily available carbon is already leached out and consumed.