But that didn't seem to work so here's my question.
I've been to Home Depot, two Lowes, Ace Hardware and a large local nursery. No luck finding small pieces of pine bark. Anything that's small enough is cyprus pulp, eucalyptus or rubber, and the pine bark that's available is all nuggets.
Any new advice after 3 years? None of the stores I went to had any of the soil conditioners listed in this thread. Have things changed since then? Anyone from Central Florida have advice on a local supplier?
Thanks for any advice!

I have to tell you that my attempts to grow tomatoes were foiled by weather and squirrels. I never had nematodes though. I gave up after two miserable seasons.

Tom

Many of the local (Michigan) landscape suppliers are also sold out of the small pine bark nuggets, probably because it's late in the growing season up here. The local retailer I get mine from (Meijers) changed suppliers this season and their "mini nuggets" were much larger than they were last season. It took a lot of work to get the right size bark from the new bags this year. I'll have to find them elsewhere next year.

Are there any bonsai stores in your area? If so they might be able to help you locate some pine bark fines. Also, if you need only small quantities, I read somewhere that pet stores sometimes sell fir bark (similar to pine bark) for use in reptile cages. I've never looked for that but it might be another option.

Most of the larger lansdscape stores/nurseries carry some size of pine bark mini nuggets, sometimes in bulk. Again, the size of the mini nuggets vary quite a bit, depending on source.

Ironically the large pine nuggets we use in our gardens for mulch says right on the bag "from the southern pinelands".

Let us know if you find any in your area. Good luck!

Dave

Perhaps Al or others on this list could advise whether orchid mix is a good component for your containers. I've not used it for growing in containers but would be curious if it would work.

HTH,

Dave

Size does matter. It's probably at the top of the list of the most important considerations in deciding what organic soil components are appropriate.

Al

Thanks for the clarification. I have seen many brands of "orchid mix" but typically the prebagged mixes are a combination of bark, vermiculite or perlite, and peat moss. Quite often the content listing on the bag is a bit vague at best. I've seeing things like "forest bark" or "natural forest products" listed, so who knows what that might be.

Also, the bark I mentioned looks to be fairly large, maybe 1/2" to 1" in size. Hard to tell but it looks a bit larger that the pine bark I typically use. I just thought it might be an alternative to pine bark if pine bark cannot be located.

Thanks.

Dave

http://floridamulchonline.com/main.php?main=mulch_pinebark_nug

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=97822-66882-97822

HTH,

Dave

They have a store locator on their website...