Hard to know if it is worth it without knowing the price or looking at the bag.

Nonetheless, spending money at the local nursery is better for the local economy and small family-owned business than your money is for the bottom line of a corporation.

In the amounts present in a couple bags vs your yard, the difference is minuscule.

Dan

If you wait till May you can get lots of very cheap compost as well as free mulch from the City and County of Denver. I hate the idea of all the energy, plastic, cost involved in buying compost in a bag. It's sort of the opposite of why we compost.

Welcome to RMG, Inmca! We like Creepy Lurkers around here! ;-)

What Dan says!

Regardless of what they call it, there's no way to know what you're getting without just buying a bag and opening it to see what's in it.

Check out the thread linked below for a discussion of bagged and bulk soils/composts (scroll down to the posts starting on 01.25.11).

If you should decide to buy something bulk, and if you got it from Timberline, it would be produced locally (at least some of his mixes), AND purchased from an entirely local company. If you got a bulk mix from Paulino's, it would be from a local company, but they buy it in and don't produce it themselves!

See if any of the info in that thread helps you, and come back here to let us know if you have additional questions.

Skybird

P.S. Don't know when it was or what it was about, but I remember you posting in the past! :-)

Here is a link that might be useful: Big Dilemma thread!

Thanks for the responses!

I don't have a truck so buying bulk would require a delivery of some sort. Renting a truck or totally messing up the back of the mini-van (never mind where I am going to put the kiddos when I go to pick it up?!) The bags in front of King Soopers that I saw yesterday appear to be fairly local...from Arvada...and then I'm not going out of my way, using gas to go to travel to a nursery! I hate the idea of wasting plastic but as I see it everything's a compromise. I use reusable grocery bags and am now composting all kitchen waste. So what do you do. You do what you can.

Like I said, I have a couple of compost piles going and am tending to them every few days but I wanted to go ahead and put SOMEthing down now before the big spring rains (if we get any this year?) so it can soak in. We just moved in in July and I think the soil could use some lovin'.

Actually, I bought a few bags about 3 days ago called Cow and Compost from the The Richlawn Company (in Platteville,CO) and it seemed OK as in brown and fine.

I was just wondering about the difference between sheep and cow composts among the local companies. I will check out the compost and soil forums.

Thanks again :)