The usual pine bark fines hunting adventures here that I feel I need to share - to provide shortcuts for others but also to get some advice.

The pictures of my experience are here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uyb94mphivnzacv/ck69aT2Gp_.

I found two different bark fines products at different stores here in Brooklyn. Crest hardware store in Williamsburg has "Golden Trophy pine bark mulch" which is uncomposted, particles are a bit too large (that is a dime in the pictures) and a fair amount of wood chippings are included, which I separated manually.

Lowes on 2nd avenue had "Premium mulch pine bark fines". The bag was very wet, so I am actually drying the contents on a table cloth on the floor of my NYC apartment - that makes for hilarious facebook status updates - highly recommend this to everybody, haha.

The particles are way too fine and fully or almost fully composted (see picture).

I understand I need something in the middle of these two products, and none of them will work alone. (Or will it?) I am going to try to find a place that can chop the Golden Trophy bark for me further and then I am just going to mix the two barks together, 2.5 and 2.5 parts, to make the 5 parts pine fines for the mix. Does this plan sound alright? I am going to see how the actual mix looks - may need to add less sphagnum peat moss or the smaller pine bark particles if the mix seems water-retentive enough.

Where should I be looking to get the bark chopped finer? I have some leads to tree removal services here, but welcome other ideas very much as well.