Just about every place that sells bulk topsoil also sells bark (and compost). If you have access to a pickup truck, they'll fill up the bed for about $15-25, I don't know of places in Everett..but I'm sure there's quite a few. Just look in the phonebook under bark or topsoil, and you'll find some. Or I bet someone will chime in here with a place. The only bad ingredients I can think of are splinters..so wear gloves!

Get wood chips from an arborist instead.

Here is a link that might be useful: Myth of Pretty Mulch

Ron, Do you use woodchips? I had thought of that, mostly because it's free, but I was apparently misinformed that wood chips would contain weed seeds. I don't mind a courser chip. Do you have pictures of chips in your landscape? And do I call just any arborist? or do you have a recommendation?

Thanks again!
Heather

You kind of never know what you are going to get with wood chips, but I have used them from many different sources and never had a problem with weed seeds. If anything they do a much better job supressing weeds than bark and it's better for the plants anyways. And if you have a pitchfork they are easier to work with. And you don't get splinters. And they're free.... for the present.

Ian....pictures?

I agree- wood chips are the way to go.

Here is a link that might be useful: new wood chips

I've read that the decomposition of wood chips uses nitrogen from the soil. See link below.
On most of my beds I use a bark/composted cow manure mix from Pacific Topsoils that has a nice fluffy texture and a darker color I personally prefer.

Here is a link that might be useful: tips for using woodchips

Do you get your woodchips from a tree trimming outfit?

silver creek, those look nice. Thank you :-)

Heather

Wood chips are great if you can get em, and they only steal nitrogen from the soil if they're incorporated into it, they're fine as a mulch.

Wood chips are actually better than bark as a mulch because they encouge benificial microbal growth in the soil. Sam is right, they only steal nitrogen if they are worked into the soil. We started using wood chips instead of bark not just because of the expense, but because we had been told of the benefits- and it seems to be true.

I've never heard of "arborist wood chips". Seems they're not something you buy, and I can definitely get on board with that, but where DO I get them? Do I look up "arborist" in the phone book?

Are they really usually free, or is this going to be another one of those times that I read online that something is easy to get free, call local businesses and essentially get laughed at?

Kristin

Ours aren't free, but pretty close. We get them from a tree service/arborist- the cost is mostly to cover the transport costs. If you have the power line/ tree clearing crews working near you, you can often get their chips free, and our county has a waiting list for people who want chips. We pay the small fee ($4/ yard) so we get the chips when we want them and don't have to wait for them, or get them when we don't need them and store them.

I use woodchips all the time. Every time I see a tree trimming company working in the area I tell them they can dump their chips at my place and if it's their last load of the day, they can have a few beers. I'm swamped in chips! I have had to send them at times to my neighbors.

If you don't like the look of chips you can always top dress with bark. That way the bulk of the mulch is free chips and just the part you see and pay for is on top.

I use the chips both in the beds and on the paths. Extra thick on the paths so they are a bit rounded on top. I think of the paths as arteries feeding the trees and shrubs, rather than a wet ditch I have to put pavers on to stay dry. With the chips both on the path and in the beds, borders are not as critical. I just trim the groundcovers and plant the trimmings elsewhere. This works well on my relatively large garden, but can be adapted to smaller gardens as well.

You can have a raised bed and a raised path at the same time with a lower area between the two. The link shows a chip path that I raked the leaves from the center last Fall.

Here is a link that might be useful: Wood chip path in the Fall

Lovely photo- you have a beautiful woodland!

I'll second that, beautiful!

I have no experience with wood chips but I hate bark. It is horrible to work around. If you putter in your garden you get painful slivers in your knees and hands.

I don't care for the color either. We use composted yard debris that is almost black. It weathers to a lighter color. We pay for it but it is very inexpensive.

We dig it in every time we plant something and do topdress every year but after doing this for ten years we have some really nice soil instead of almost solid clay that we started with.

I'm going to look into getting free wood chips for a path.

I looked in the phone book under "arborist" and there weren't any, so I looked under "tree services" and called one called Arbor-something, can't remember at the moment. They took my name, number and address, and said that when they have a load of chips in the area (most likely within a week) they'll call first and then dump it in my driveway free.

Easy as pie! I guess if it's this simple I'll make sure to get enough for the grass I'm ripping out in front, and fill in the driveway while I'm at it.

Kristin

Heather, Did you get the chips? Or did you decide on something else? Laurie

Laurie,
I'm getting chips ;-) I had to hunt around a bit but I'm getting them from a small local company that doesn't spray chemicals.

Thanks for the advice everyone, glad it helped others, too.

Heather

My garden is mostly herbaceous, so I am constantly battling slugs. I have found that wood chips do not reduce slug populations; finely ground Douglas fir bark does. I have been using bark for five years, and my slug problem has nearly disappeared. It may be that the sharp slivers irritate slugs as well as people. As a long-term soil amendment, I believe that wood chips are just as good as bark. Some tree surgeons do not keep their chipper blades sharp, and their "chips" can be twigs three or four feet long, a real pain to deal with. You should ask if the chips are reasonably uniform in size. And some guys will dump rocks, trash, etc. at your place along with the chips.

A minus for bark is that weed seeds germinate just fine in it when it's wet. A plus for bark is that wildflower seeds germinate very well in it, stuff like Erythroniums, Lilies, Solomon's Seal, Fairybells, etc. A plus for wood chips is that they last much longer than bark. Another plus is that I can always get them free here in Portland. A year or two after you apply wood chips, you may find dozens of holly or other tree seedlings in your yard. Pull them right away, or you will have a very difficult time later. Roundup does not kill Holly.

My preference is fine Doug fir bark for the planting beds, and wood chips or gravel for walkways. The wood chips hold up much better in walkways, and do not stick to your shoes like fine bark.

Erythronium and trillium seem to germinate just fine in wood chips.

Here is a link that might be useful: erythroniums blooming

Does anyone know if it's okay to use chips for a path on top of a septic drainfield? We're currently landscaping ours, and our installer advised us not to put in raised beds, but I forgot to ask him about paths.

I get mine from a local wood mill. I think it is like $135 or so for an entire Semi Truck load of them.... I bought some last year and I still have a healthy mountain of them to use. The only mistake I made was I should have said "wood chips" instead of "wood shavings". Next time I will be more specific, since I think the chips will last longer in my garden, and not be quite as "fluffy".

Sheesh. The company that assured me they should have a load to drop at my house within the week? Yeah, they never called back. Neither did any of the 3 or 4 other companies I left my name and number with.

I did find one company out in Puyallup (I'm in N Tacoma) that said they had a yard full that I could pick some up from, so I guess I'll do that, but it's going to be a PITA because we only have a minivan, so that means 4 or 5 trips probably to get as many as I need.

I wonder if these companies are thinking I don't comprehend the size of the loads they need to dump, so I'm not worth calling back, or something? I've noticed a certain subtle and probably unconscious condescension towards "lady gardeners" is very common in the construction/landscaping/heavy work type industries (I have done my share of calling around for various DIY projects).

Anyway, how do I get these people to actually CALL ME BACK and drop off loads instead of just brushing me off? I am seriously needing some mulch here.

Kristin

Well, the women in the office of the place I've been dealing with lately are about as friendly as cacti, so I don't think you are necessarily encountering sexism--although my female friend who also deals with them seems to have a different experience...at another, nearby place (competitor) the man at the desk told me he'd have to look in a book to tell me delivery rates, then sat there while I looked at the sheets of prices for picking it up yourself, never getting the delivery rate schedule book out the whole time.

The cuddly girls have been ordering some very nice cedar chips for us from another source down closer to Seattle somewhere (Snohomish?), forgot what they said was the name. I'd suggest you get on the phone, call around and ask about cedar chips, unless you have definitely exhausted all avenues. Maybe one or two of the ones you have talked to have cedar chips, but didn't mention them before because you asked about wood chips or used another term that didn't make them think to offer cedar chips as an alternative. For one thing, I don't think they sell it as a mulch, even though it makes a very nice one.

"Maybe one or two of the ones you have talked to have cedar chips, but didn't mention them before because you asked about wood chips"

Isn't that a bit strange? I mean, last time I checked, cedar WAS wood.

I'm calling my way through the phone book, and I guess I'll keep it up till I find some.

Kristin

Again, if they only thought of cedar chips as play area/pathway material and you said you were asking about mulch, and they were half as disinterested as bark and soil yard counter people that I have encountered lately...tight lipped functionaries that don't make any suggestions are far from rare, in my experience.

I'm finding this a really interesting thread and am also having trouble getting them to call back. Do we want cedar chips? The one company that sounded interested in delivering to me, said that the chips at this time of year are full of green growth and therefore break down faster. Is this good for a garden? I am wanting to use them in my huge veggie garden for pathways and areas that are fallow.

If you ever do get bark mulch, get hemlock bark for less slivers.

Cedar chips I'm talking about are just cedar chips, a byproduct of milling operations I believe. "Green growth" sounds like wood chips, as in "arborist wood chips" resulting from the chipping and shredding of prunings by tree services. These latter have whatever came with the prunings, including foliage, climbing weeds and garbage. If you want something uniform and clean, purchase cedar chips.

Freshly chipped material from an arborist is moldy, due to the foliage content--hemlock leaves positively smoke--so be sure to wear a mask when working with it.

I read one article link posted above. It was in-depth, but not deep enough. It was not based on enough extensive hands-on field experience: experience at hundreds of landscape projects.

As a landscape contractor, Certified Arborist and home gardener, my preference is medium Douglas fir bark.

So it's "said" that it can have weed seeds, but I've never seen any real problems like that. And I've completed about 1500 landscaping installation and renovation projects with that product.

Almost all ground I've worked on was certain to have pre-existing weed seeds. There will usually be hundreds or thousands. Any mulch whether bark or tree service chips will trigger germination of those anyhow, just by holding moisture over them.

Bark has substances that can repel water, but only if you let it get packed. In-general, water goes right through the spaces. It's the particles that repel, not the air gaps between. So that part of the article was incomplete because it didn't mention the porous gaps between the particles. Barkdust goes on shredded, not as giant solid sheets of bark.

I use a shower-head style wand for my shrubs and the water permeates right through the bark.

Bark dust is incredible for retaining moisture below in the soil.

I've had other tree services dump dozens of loads for me in the past, and about 10 loads this year. I find the chips to be inconsistent, and on a few occassions if blades are dull, 3' strands can be encountered. That's not the norm though.

The chips decompose faster than barkdust, so more wood chips must be applied than would be of barkdust.

My usual use for wood chips is to spread it 6" thick. It quickly packs to 4" thick and in a year or two is down to a decomposed 1/2" to 2" layer. I lay that as a base for barkdust and often spread bark on top well before the wood chips decay.

Wood chips can contain so many catkins, samaras and other tree seeds, that any mention of weed seeds in bark pales in comparison to the germination that can sprout from a wood chip pile.

I've had tree services bring in chip piles that looked like a Chia Pet after a good rain.

So the winner is.... Bark Mulch if you can afford the moderate cost.

Great site MD (on your "mypage").
What about tilling the bark right into the earth in the autumn when you manure it? Will it decompose quick enough not to have a vegetable garden full of bark come Spring? Does it have an adverse effect on the soil later on?

I've tilled fine bark into the soil just a few times when I wanted something organic and a bit coarse. But those times were few. It should decompose slower. For fast results, a fine composted compost would offer more benefits faster. But it's not going to do any harm to incorporate barkdust, except a possible need for a few more nutrients.

For vegetable gardening, I usually put fine compost in the soil, but I do use barkdust around my tomatoes because the bark does not erode under an irrigating shower like loose soil or fine mulch will.

Some golf course superintendants tinkered with bark in sand greens for a continual supply of organic matter.

OK, after a month of calling through the phone book I STILL have no mulch. About 6 places have taken my name and number and I haven't heard a peep from any of them.

However, someone in my city was lucky enough to somehow get a load dumped at their place and was giving away the extras on Craigslist. We went to pick it up and I was appalled at the quality of the stuff. There is no way I could use it to mulch my flowerbeds. Big chunks of branches an inch and a half thick, pencil-sized twigs 3 feet long, big old splinters, just really coarse and uneven. It didn't look anything like the pictures you guys have posted.

What gives? Am I going to get crap like this if I finally do succeed in getting some dropped off at my house? And if so, why isn't it what everyone else seems to be getting?

Kristin

Yes: It's ground up tree parts. Doesn't look like bark or compost. But size of pieces does depend on how fine a grind shredder used produces.

To girlndocs...

That's pretty much what I posted much earlier. I get the stuff sometimes, but I know it can be unreliable, with strands as long as 6 feet.

On occassion, you can find an arborist or tree service that responsibly and routinely maintains and sharpens their chipper blades. In that case, you could expect fairly nice chips. But it means finding the right company with the right chipper.

There's a site www.arboristsite.com

If you post in the homeowner helper forums, you may be able to locate a chip source.

State your city and state in the thread like:

"Looking for chips in Tacoma, WA"