I have had both crushed rock mulch and bark mulch. The pros on rocks: very effective on water conservation, medium effective on keeping down the weeds and doesn't blow away in the wind. Con: It is hard to clean up all the little leaves and twigs that fall on to it. If you vaccuum, you suck up the rocks. If you rake, you can end up with rock where you don't want it - like in your grass. If you leave the little leaves in the pebbles, you start getting more weeds because the little leaves will compost in place. THis is also a problem if you like to move around your plants or add more plants. Also, depending on what you are growing, it can keep your soil a little too cool. Rock is generally preferred for clay soil. Pros on bark: effective on water conservation, medium on the weeds, easy to put down and cheap to refresh. Cons: The big bark mulch blows in the wind (and we do have wind in the spring!!) If you rake it during springs clean up, it comes up with the dead leaves. It will rot over time (this is good and bad as it does amend the soil) so you will have to refresh it. And you are going to have to add a little nitrogen to your soil every spring because the rotting will steal the nitrogen from your soil. Wood chips are generally preferred for sandy or loam soil All that said, I have bark mulch currently. I live on an acre and a half that has lots of bushes and trees. We prune yearly and a service comes in each year and chips all the trimmings. I have them chip it quite small. So my decision was easy as I already owned the bark mulch.

I think it's a great idea! I may have only been on this site for a mere 5 days or soi, but I've browsed around enough to know the ins-and-outs of gardenweb and find it difficult to go from one exchage forum to the next simply tp see whats up for grabs, imasgine if I truly wanted something and posted.I know that I've been searching for some nice ghost wood or other nice woods from places other than black jung;e and would like some really really nice, terratium appropriate broad-leaved lpants and orchids for the one I'm making now, but when I went in serch I realized that the majority are extremely large and too waterintolerant or the like. Not to mention most ferns in the fern exchage are staghorns. If I wanted one of those, I'd get it from my backyard, but I'm not in need of one.hell if there was an exchange here I think it may even be as easy as saying " I need large plants for my WTFs(white's tree frogs) and possibly get a few good offers. I think this idea is a great one.... two thumbs up.. I'll give my go ahead in the other forum as well! -Andrew

Jakvis - thanks for the info. and you could easily be correct but I sure hope not. It's also possible that I didn't describe the problem in complete detail. I wasn't home while the tech was here so I'm relying on what DH repeated to me. The service tech did call Sub Zero while he was here and described the situation - whatever the problem was required recovering the freon. The tech told DH that the repair itself would only be a couple of hundred dollars but the additional cost was due to the freon recovery and second tech. He even suggested that we consider buying a new unit. We've used the same repair company for 16 years and we've always thought they've been honest and fairly reasonable in their charges. DH originally gave them a $300 check to cover the service call and for the parts that he would have to order. When we canceled the repair they promptly refunded all but $75 to cover the service call. I would hate to think that the tech was incompetent. I hope I'm not merely rationalizing since this was not an inexpensive purchase - I don't regret replacing the unit because it was definitely showing it's age and the abuse it received from my 4 sons. At the very least if we do list our home potential buyers won't be turned off at finding out the frig is nearly 26 years old and At that point we'll also have to decide if we want or need to replace the freezer - but we have other options if that happens. There isn't a soffit over the freezer and it's at the end of a cabinet run next to a doorway so we could easily opt for a smaller, less expensive unit.

I believe you'd have to contact Houzz and ask how to go about getting a new topic listed. The Pets Forum is pretty quiet compared to what it was before Houzz took over, so not sure if they'd be willing to add another category.