I made my own bark fines. I made 3 dirt sifters with 1/8", 1/4", and 1/2" hardware cloth. The bagged pine bark was from Menards, which is like Home Depot or Lowes, but for Dakotans, Cheeseheads, and Minnesotans only. I didn't like the bagged product because it had lots of wood in it. I ended up using a lot of elm bark that I found in the woods, because that was pure bark. I ran the bark through my chipper, and then sifted it through my bark-gradation sifters. I think my final bark mix was 2 parts 1/8" plus - 1/4" minus and 1 part 1/4" plus- 1/2" minus. The YouTube videos I watched just used everything that passed through the 1/2" screen, and then discarded what went through the 1/8" screen. I didn't really like that product because it was too coarse.
I felt the 5-1-1 mix was a bit too airy for my needs. There was nothing in it that held any water. I added washed sand, crusher fines, topsoil, and locally-sourced sedge peat to my mix. I ended up with 5-1-1-.5-.5-.5 mix, and I liked that a lot better. If anyone's interested, I could post some pictures later, and my opinions on the benefits of this stuff. As of right now, the jury is still out. Seems like quite a bit of work, but in some instances it may be beneficial.
