Playground mulch vs wood chips

Working o creating some new garden beds. Local landscaping shop said that they have playground mulch but no wood chips. I did some research on playground mulch and it appears this is not recommended for a garden because multiple sources said it does no leach organic material into soil. Is this true? If so I need an explanation I'm not understanding

Welcome to permies! Woodchips from uncontaminated (no biocidal spray or treatments) trees break down into fungal food and humus over a year or two. I do not know what “playground mulch” is. It was woodchips when I was a kid. I would not use dyed “mulch” (often biocide ridden chipped pallets from countries that use even worse chemicals than we allow in our land fills). Nor would I use the rubber stuff on a garden. It would essentially be adding forever garbage to the soil.

Hi K,
Playground mulch on the homedepot website says it is "made from regional forest products" and is "nontoxic and biodegradable". In essence it is probably about the same as wood mulch from the store. Arborist wood chips are probably best because they come in a variety of chip sizes and will often include green material from the leaves as well, but you have to find an arborist or tree trimming service and then probably only if they are in your area.

I don't think it would be any worse than the bagged mulch... but I am the type of person to make do with nothing until I can get the best. I would not really recommend following my example :)

I ended up finding a guy who had arborist chips, exactly what I was looking for. I was told the playground chips are super finely ground to absorb shock, which is something I don't really want. I was just intrigued at multiple sources saying the playground chips didn't break down because it didn't make sense to Me. My theory is they get really compacted being so fine

When I searched “playground mulch” it came up with the Home Depot woodchips, which if they claim don’t break down quickly are likely cedar or some other allelopathic, rot resistant wood, which is not ideal for the garden. The other results were rubber products that seem an appropriate reused product for contained playground settings, but a nightmare for the future gardener dealing with them. Either would be better than the bagged and dyed “mulch” from the big box stores which are often from pallets treated with stuff so toxic they are rejected from landfills. Glad to hear you found arborist chips. I have found stopping and talking to landscapers and arborists parked by the road, or calling their office, has been a good way to get free chip drops. The site chipdrop is also good if in a convenient place for them to deposit a truckload. I do ask about their herbicide practices before inviting them to save on dump fees by giving me that biomass.

Hi K,

If the playground chips are just regular, untreated and undyed and unaltered chips, then I would think that they would make a great garden bedding as they should break down faster.  But of course this all depends on all of those variables.  Regular chips should work just fine.

For what it’s worth, just after I bought my first house with my wife, we owned a spec home with no lawn or landscaping.  Personally I loved it as I was the one to create all the flower beds and plant all the trees.  We put in several raised flower beds that were built up using landscaping bricks, meaning that they created a volume behind that needed to be filled.  We were on a budget and I was getting frustrated by the high price of delivered topsoil so I thought that maybe I could achieve the same effect by using wood chips.  

I went ahead and ordered a load of wood chips for a fraction of the price and filled up the bed, leaving it mounded.  I then planted right into the chips, mostly using creeping phlox as it is a nitrogen fixer.  The chips eventually settled but the phlox thrived in the wood chips.  At one point I got a huge, yellow blob of fungus (I heard it was called dog-vomit fungus which is unfortunate as it is actually quite beautiful for a while).  That fungus helped turn the chips into a more fertile bedding and the flowers thrived!

By the time we sold the house 3 years later, I topped off the chips with a fresh layer as the top level of the chips dropped below the landscaping bricks, but not by much.  The creeping phlox spread over much of the surface and down the bricks.  It was beautiful.  I always thought that this was a good, cheap alternative to buying expensive topsoil.

This just a rambling post to convey my two cents.  I hope it is worth something.

Eric

I was getting nostalgic while writing my last post so I went looking for old pictures of the old house and landscaping.  I found a picture of the flower bed with the phlox in full bloom.  Just to reiterate, I built the retaining wall (I think I did a pretty good job for having never done a project like this before).  I think the plants in the background are tulips.  The phlox is about a year old if memory serves.

Eric

Eric Hanson wrote:I was getting nostalgic while writing my last post so I went looking for old pictures of the old house and landscaping.  I found a picture of the flower bed with the phlox in full bloom.  Just to reiterate, I built the retaining wall (I think I did a pretty good job for having never done a project like this before).  I think the plants in the background are tulips.  The phlox is about a year old if memory serves.

Eric

That's awesome! Great to look back on photos of our first house as well. We recently moved into a 5 acre lot, al field. Great because it's a blank slate, bad because everything I add looks completely random for now until I can fill it in more. Just a huge field then.... oh there's a house. Oh there's 2 cherry trees.

Difficult in my mind how to start something totally new. But it is very fertile, it used to be sheep pasture.

I am late to the party but thought my experience might be helpful. Where I live in Australia, playground mulch is usually bark mulch called tan bark. It's lighter and more durable than wood chip. The previous owners of our property covered large swathes of the garden with tan bark (some of it over the top of black plastic). It seems to soak up water ok, but also dry out quickly, so with the light rains we have here, none of that moisture was held long enough to reach the soil. The soil underneath was dry and lifeless while surface roots cling desperately to the tan bark layer. I also suspect that it was laid up to 5 years ago and still hasn't broken down.

In parts of the garden that have received consistent moisture this past year (like under the trampoline where the kids run the sprinkler in the summer for a cool bounce) the tan bark has composted beautifully, so all is not lost.

Hope this observation is helpful. I love regular tree service woodchip - full of life and smells of joy. Play ground tan bark is not that.