Black Mulch?

[Marilyn]

Hi Is black mulch...."ground pallots" bad to use? TIA, Marilyn

[paghat]

Ground up pallets is a wood waste product (primarily hardwood) frequently used as a commercial compost ingredient, no different than if you mixed some woodshavings in your home compost. Ground up pallets are also used in manufacturing cheap paper, & mixed with recycled milkbottle plastic for that ugly-ass "Plastic Lumber" product. Sawdust designated "ground pallet" is not just pallets of course; it can include all mill waste, pulverized trees that were not useful to make lumber, or any wood-waste that was never painted or never chemically treated (in theory at least).

There's nothing wrong with it, but it would not have much nutrient value if not composted with other things. I never heard of it as a BLACK mulch product per se, but it SOUNDS like that would just be sawdust dyed black. Unless it was just awfully cheap, like fully composted steer manure is way cheap, I'd stick to steer compost, which looks like rich black loam when used as a top-coating but is inert until mixed into soil, so it suppresses germination of weeds. If black-dyed uncomposted sawdust were cheaper, & if I could find out what they usedto dye it with, I'd consider such a product. Some kinds of plants such as huckleberries & bunchberries really require a lot of rotting wood in their soil to do well because rotting wood dramatically increases the percentage of beneficial fungus in the soil, so I can imagine a garden that would benefit from uncomposted sawdust mixed in it or as a topcoating.

-paghat the ratgirl

[Stephen M. Henning]

From

PEET BLACK MULCH IS GROUND EXTRA FINE AND MIXED WITH A SPECIAL COMPOST THAT OTHERS JUST CAN NOT DUPLICATE. THEN IT IS AGED IN A BURN PILE LONGER THAN MOST MULCHES. AS IT BREAKS DOWN IN YOUR GARDENS, SWEET PEET MULCH ONLY TURNS DARKER AS IT FEEDS YOUR PLANTS BETTER THAN ANY PELLET FERTILIZER ON THE MARKET. IT'S UNIQUE BODY & COLOR GIVES SWEET PEET MULCH THE QUALITY THAT MOST PEOPLE WILL PAY THE EXTRA DOLLAR TO HAVE AT THEIR HOME. CUSTOMERS THAT HAVE USED SWEET PEET BLACK MULCH IN THE PAST WILL USE NO OTHER IN THE FUTURE.

Sounds like a good marketing ploy for sawdust. Obviously it can't have many nutrients or it would have a fertilizer label.