Got to see one of these in action yesterday. Stopped to fill my deisel buckets and saw this nice red truck and machine in the spray and was. Asked the driver about it and where it was headed. Turned out to be a local tree service company very close to me. I finished up my chores and headed on over to see it operate. All I can say is wow or would that be WOW! As fast as the bobcat could load the hopper with regular chipper chips out the other end comes colorized mulch. Did I say fast, did I say nice product. Didn't really get a solid answer on price, but sure was impressed with the speed, quietness and quality of product.
I've seen the video on internet site I was very impressed it is really fast but I have a question: Why mulch is colored?
Mulch of the mulch here is cypress or pine bark. Cypress is becoming difficut to get and other trees are being used. Pine and eucalyptus are two that immediately come to mind.
Since Mulch is usually of a brown or red color, it became fashionable to color the lighter colored mulches with dye. Most are brown, black, red or yellow.
Landscape architects discovered the interest in colored mulch and began to use it in their designs. It has developed into a kind of "craze".
Designer mulch ::) What will the young rich kids think of next?
Alot of the dyed mulch is ground up pallets. :o
Hey James if you want to see another Rotochopper in action stop over to my place next time you go by. I got the next size up from that working daily. As there slogan says "perfect in one pass"
will do next time in jersey!
Mulch is colored cause this stuff is made from not bark from just regular run of the mill waste product wood chips. Actually he already got paid to chip it on the site. In other words it is not mulch not bark just wood chips pine mostly, colored to make it be nice for the paying customer. and yes I do get the one pass idea.
I asked 'cause here in Italy mulch isn't coloured. Mulch is made of tamarack (L. decidua) bark
DD mulch here is worth about twice value colered vs natural. I would have to say red is most popular
I said in another post I am doing my homework cause I want to start my sawmill business, everyday I read something new trough the forum so I see new way of business. I don't know if there is in Italy a market for coloured mulch, but if coloured has twice the value you could have a easy recover from investing in this type of equipment ( correct me if I wrong). I don't want bother you but how much could cost a machine like the rotochopper?
I was wrong I searched trough google and had an update coloured mulch is used in Italy too :P :P
Im interested in seeing this thing in action. sawyerfortyish if you this maybe I could see yours. Thanks
The origional bark mulch was just that bark that was beat off the logs before they were milled.It was a waste product for a long time until some smart dude discovered folks liked the way it looked around their shrubs.Done right it needed to ferment in a pile and go through "heats" before it was sold so it wouldn' burn.We used to pay $2.25 a yard delivered from NH.Today bark mulch as any mystery wood ground up,coloring added to hide its true identity. Frank C.
Notice that bags of cypress mulch say, cypress blend. Blended with what? Ground pallets and other waste wood.
Quote from: Cedarman on April 14, 2012, 07:32:32 AM
Notice that bags of cypress mulch say, cypress blend. Blended with what? Ground pallets and other waste wood.
In Fla. the agreement seems to be 10% cypress to be Cypress "blend'. The balance is mostly pine. It is killing our real cypress mulch. Their price is about the same, but the quality is poor so the "cypress" is developing a reputation for poor quality. As a side note, I shipped a load of cypress out recently to a municipality, and they did not like it. I was told it didn't look like the cypress mulch they had gotten before and they wanted it matched (ours was too dark). After a quick investigation we found that their "cypress" was basically all pine. So now my cypress mulch doesn't meet their standard! ??? I think I'm going to start coloring! ::)
Mark
The blended product helps my business out a lot. At the home and garden show I have a bag of the cypress blend and make sure the consumer knows that it is being blended with what ever is cheap and if it has hard wood in it, that termites love hardwood. My cedar is 99.9999 % cedar mulch. We occasionally get a small oak that gets ground up with the cedar so I do not call it 100 %. (most of it actually is 100%).