Do any of you have experience using Oak Leaf Mold in
your soil mix. If so do you recomend it or is their a
better organic to replace this.

Oak leaf mold (Aka rotted oak leaves -- AKA forest mold -- is
often used in Great Britain (or at least many of the British
bonsai-writers mention it as a soil component). I don't know of
anyone over here that uses it (but I'm sure I'll hear from them
now ;-); down here in the warm, humid south it would decompose
too quickly and turn to fine-grained mush in our soil.

Ground-up bark is better (IMHO), though I use a small amount of
horse-manure-hay compost in most of my soil mixtures, and oal
leaf mold is just another kind of compost.

Also have any of you
ever experimented with hemlock bark rather then pine
bark, if so is there any advantage using it over pine
bark.

No experience with hemlock bark, but if it's not filled with
volatiles (like red cedar bark is) I'd think it would be as good.
You don't use the bark as a source of nurients, after all.

Finally I have seen allot of conflicting info
on whether or not spagnum peat moss is good to use in
soil or dangerous in soil "which is it???".


Sphagnum is good. Peat -- the dried, ground-up, powdery end
product of old, dry sphagnum -- if present in too large a
concentration, can actually repel water, and is bad, or at least
not a preferred soil component for bonsai. Fresh (even green)
sphagnum, cut or chopped small (but not powdery) is a good
addition to the soil of acid-loving plants. I harvest it from my
swamp, shred it and add a little of it to all of my azalea pots.
Sphagnum contains a substance that promotes root growth. I have
no idea if it is still present in peat.

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Our life is
frittered away by detail . . . . Simplify! Simplify. -- Henry
David Thoreau - Walden

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