That's great pricing! However, my recommendation for anyone that can't get wholesale pricing is to call your local nursery or feed store. If they carry 4 c ft. bags, great. If not, ask if they know of anyone that does. If they don't ask who their supplier is and call them. Most likely they'll have it, can get it and will sell retail for almost what they charge wholesale. I got my vermiculite that way and paid $14.50 a bag. Nearly the same price. Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's garden adventure

Yes, it's a 40 min drive for me to West Chester and considering the time and gas and that I'd rather the course grade it's worth the extra $22 for me. (I need 4 bags and shipping is $30.) I don't know why the price varies so much but it is very frustrating. We did sfg 3 years ago when we lived in Utah and it was much easier to find and much cheaper! By the way, uline will ship the same day if you get your order in by 6pm and ups estimate delivery time to this area is one day. Another reason why it's worth it to me.

Our local Ace Hardeware special ordered 4cu ft bags of Vermiculte for $17 and change for us. I had had a horribly hard time finding anyone who even knew what the stuff was so I asked the very helpful Ace guy where he ended up finding it for me just in case he ended up going somewhere before the next time I needed more. A local concrete place was the source. When I need more I will call them and see if they will sell to me direct. A local well-known nursery only had the small 1 cu ft bags for sale that they wanted $7 dollars a bag. When we asked them about getting something larger they told us they couldn't. After we picked up our load at Ace and knew what it looked like we were browsing at that same well-known nursery. They had exactly the same stuff we had just bought- they just didn't want to sell it to us. Though the bags are very large and bulky they are extremely light. It was pretty humorous picking up that first bag bracing for weight and then finding out there wasn't hardly any.

Turns out Co-Op was over-priced. Beaty's on Wildwood Ave in Cleveland had the vermiculite, same size/brand for $16.99. Compost is cow manure, hay. Has been piled up, sitting outside, is well aged & very "clean" (can you say that about manure?) looking, no dirt. It's from a farm in Athens. Yes, it's a lot of compost! I've got 3 beds mixed, 4 x 12, one 2 x 18 +/-, more beds to build. I'm having a blast with it. I'm in Birchwood. I don't sell at markets, just family use/canning. Bales of peat were 13.49 for 3.8 cu/ft, slightly smaller size.