"Sue Begg" wrote in message
...
In message , shazzbat
writes

"Sue Begg" wrote in message
...
In message , Mike Lyle
writes
Sue Begg wrote:
[..]

Do you want the bark chips just for mulching or is visual appeal a
factor.
It seems to me that you would save a bundle by getting contract mulch
rather
than bark chips.

What part of the country are you in by the way?

Steve


I'm 30 miles north of Aberdeen.

The visual appeal is a very temporary thing as I hope by next summer (or
certainly the summer after) there won't be any bare ground showing. I
tend to like wild and woolly cottage style beds :-))

All I need really is something that won't become a pest in the future
-therefore anything stony is out. I have used broken slate on another
bed and have found it a nuisance when moving plants as it is quite
difficult to clear a patch and not end up burying any.
--
Sue
Remove the puppies to reply

Ah, I'm 8 miles outside Bournemouth, so you won't want to pay my delivery
charges there!

But anyway, for the purposes you describe, I would suggest contract mulch,
the basic mulch, the stuff the builders use between the shrubs at
supermarket sites etc.

I don't know your local suppliers, but if you check out ecocomposting, they
have pictures, specifications etc to help you choose.

Steve

On 5/8/05 23:17, in article , "Mike Lyle"
wrote:

Sue Begg wrote:
[..]
Thanks to everyone for your replies. At £40 a cu metre I am having
to
do a lot of sweet-talking to hubby but at least I am clearer of
what
the options are now

While you're sweet-talking, consider why you want the stuff in the
first place. It looks awful, and has no nutritional value. Earth
should be covered with plants, not refuse the Forestry Commission's
desperate to get rid of.

Actually, we had a thread about this very subject (bark chips and nutrition)
a couple of years ago. We had visited a friend's beautiful garden in
Jersey, famous for its Camellias, only to find her wringing her hands
because the Camellias' leaves were slowly turning yellow. My husband was
able to point out to her that her gardener had put down bark chippings to
save weeding and that in rotting down, the bark chippings were leaching all
the nitrogen from the soil. In time, it will correct itself, or so I think
I recall Ray saying, but of course by then the damage is done. While
Camellias might recover at a guess, other, less woody or young plants might
not, I imagine. They could be fed, of course but that rather defeats the
labour-saving objective!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)

The message
from Sue Begg contains these words:

I'm 30 miles north of Aberdeen.

I'm Strichen with curiosity...

--
Rusty
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who read binary and
those who don't.
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

In message , Rusty Hinge
writes
The message
from Sue Begg contains these words:

I'm 30 miles north of Aberdeen.

I'm Strichen with curiosity...


Oldwhat - between New Deer and Maud :-)
Used to go to the Mormond pub in Strichen - fond memories
--
Sue
Remove the puppies to reply

The message
from Sue Begg contains these words:
In message , Rusty Hinge
writes
The message
from Sue Begg contains these words:

I'm 30 miles north of Aberdeen.

I'm Strichen with curiosity...


Oldwhat - between New Deer and Maud :-)
Used to go to the Mormond pub in Strichen - fond memories

I used to have an Aunt Maude, but she was about five miles to the east
of New Deer, IYSWIM.

(I know where New Deer is, but I've never been to/through Maud AFAIK. I
had a schoolfiend who lived at Banchory though.)

--
Rusty
Emus to: horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co full-stop uk
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

Nick Maclaren wrote:

In article ,
"Teleman" writes:
|
| You tried phoning them and asking ?
| I imagine a lot would depend on the size of the
| actual "chips" themselves - the smaller the chip, the
| more tightly they pack together, and the more each
| cubic metre would weigh

Er, no. It depends on the SHAPE of the chips. The packing
density is independent of the scale. Yes, there may be (in
practice) a correlation between shapes that pack densely and
a small size, but it is indirect and the type of bark is more
important than the size.

Not sure about that Nick. The stuff I have bought had been hydraulically
compressed into bales without any obvious voids and was very dense. It
expanded to about 3x the volume of loose bark chippings.

Compacted they are probably going to weight in at just under 1T /m^3.
Wood floats on water but depending on how wet they are not by very much.
Loose it could be anything as you say depending on the shapes.

Regards,
Martin Brown