Bonsai Soil Part 2

In order to add the organic component to my Bonsai soil mix I purchased a bag of Pine Bark nuggets from Home Depot in Annapolis. The term nugget defines a piece of Pine Bark no larger than the size of a quarter and about as thin as a piece of poster board. Some other types of Pine Bark mulch bags had pieces the size of a dollar bill and about as thick as your finger. I did not select the larger size because of how I wished to shred the Pine Bark.

I have read many ways that folks have decided to shred their Pine Bark down in size to get to the appropriate size for Bonsai soil. Some suggested using a hammer to break up the mulch. Some suggested using your hands and some even suggested using a cheese grater. I tried each of these methods and was very disappointed in each. The method that I settled on would seem obvious to many, but it did not hit me until I started looking around my garage for other tools to utilize in shredding the bark

It turns out my leaf blower has a mulching conversion extension. Duh...

However one pass through the mulching extension does not do the trick in getting the pieces small enough. Actually I had to pass it through between 4 and 5 times depending on how much got sucked through the unit at a time. If I ended up sucking up too much in a pass the pieces were not nearly shredded enough.

Start

1 pass

3 passes

5 passes

So in order to complete the task I simply filled a gallon bucket halfway and started passing the chips through by sucking them out of the bucket and through the shredding extension. They were caught in the exhaust bag and I just dumped the shredded material back into the bucket and repeated the process 4 or 5 times. In the end I came up with some really rocking organinc soil additive to with my diatomaceous earth.

Before and After