What part of the country are you in? Some materials are specific to certain areas.

Call your recycling center and see if they have a composting unit.

Call your most-local Cooperative Extension Service (usually through a university, but they're easy to talk to) and ask them.

Some landscaping materials businesses sell it, but quiz them on what it's made from before you buy.

Sue

Carlos, you may check craigslist to see if you have any local groups in your area. Ours in Atlanta is one of the larger groups so there's alot of activity and usually I find at least 1 posting for free or cheap mulch by the pick-up load every week.

Other than that, try your city or county municipalities. Many have mulch programs now to recycle yard debris especially in suburban/urban areas. Alot of those kinds of places have websites (try googling your city and/or county) all their own with phone numbers listed to call. My experience has been call one number and they'll give you another. Call that number and they'll tell you to call another. Usually by the 3rd or 4th number someone can tell you about the city/county mulch programs lol and where/when you can pick it up.

You can also check the local phone book for tree removal companies, call them up and ask if they'd be interested in dumping the wood chips in your yard next time they're in the area. I read that tip on this forum before and this week I happened to see a service in someone's yard loading branches into a chipper truck. I drove by and then finally got the nerve to turn around and go talk to them. They were thrilled to be able to dump their load nearby instead of driving the extra 15 miles they normally had to. The product isn't finished mulch of uniform color like you'd buy in the bag. It's a hodgepodge of various species of chipped trees, limbs, pine needles & leaves. Basically not as pretty but can be just as useful as mulch for water retention and adding organic matter to your soil. And it's free! I would imagine the product at city or county facilities would be similar.

Good luck. Sincerely, Danielle

There are at least 6 landscape supply places within 20 miles of me that sell many kinds of bark, either you pick up or they deliver. These places have wood chips, dyed wood chips, shredded bark, etc. for which they usually charge a goodly amount of money. A good source, and one that is delivered to you is your local tree trimmer.
You will seldom actually find termites in shredded, or chipped wood.

Tree services and utility crews are common sources. If you have tree work done on your own property keep the wood chips and save your budget and the landfill the expense of the disposal. Less attractive and more likely to blow away would be shredded paper (hose it down to keep it from blowing away). Banks and other places shred paper by the ton. You would probably have to know someone on the inside since banks are typically concerned about giving away confidential material even if shredded beyond recognition. My county sponsors document shredding days at a mobile document shredding van a few times a year. I always wondered what they do with all of those shredded tax returns, etc. Termites are rarely a problem. I suppose long horn beatles could be an issue but so far I have been lucky. A lot of municipalities also have leaf dumps that let you take away the leaves.

In southern Indiana the local landfill gives mulch away (free) to residents but it is for landscaping only not food growing. Much of the wood has been chemically treated and comes from many different, untraceable, sources.

One thing the researchers at Michigan State University have found about the Emerald Ash Borer is that if the infected tree is chipped the larva, what they do not want spread around, will fairly quickly die because there is no food for them to subsist on. If the tree is chipped after the larva have developed into adults they will no longer, the adults, be in or on the tree.
Termites prefer to dine on dry wood and all of the wood chips that I have ever seen have been fairly damp and not to the termites liking, carpenter ants would, however, like those wood chips but I have not seen those wee buggers in any of the wood chip mulches I have around either, out back in fallen trees, yes, but not in the mulch.

I live near the epicenter of The Great Ice Storm in NE Okla. This is a GREAT time to get the free mulch. The ice wasn't too choosy about what trees it took down; it took almost all of them!

No, it isn't compost. And yes, I do avoid using it right next to the house. Although I have never seen termites when turning it.

I have dumped a lot of it to make small berms to slow down the runoff of the heavy spring and fall rains. Just that simple thing has rehabilitated areas of bare clay where the cracks used to get 2 inches wide in the summer. The plants and earthworms have moved back in. On the top it looks like it isn't breaking down, but when I dig down it is nice black humus.

On the other hand, when we first moved here, we paid good money for "soil" that looked nice and dark but baked as hard as rocks. Go for the free stuff.

I have read that wood chips suck nitrogen from the soil as they decompose and so you will need to feed a garden that you mulch with them. I guess good old manure could be used to counterbalance this?

I have read that wood chips suck nitrogen from the soil as they decompose

That's one of those gardening myths that seems to persist beside all evidence to the contrary. Wood chips, just as any other form of organic matter, will actually supply nutrients to the soil as they decompose, which is one of the reasons they make a good mulch. Same with bark. The nitrogen tie-up occurs only at the soil/mulch interface - the soil surface - which helps to impede weed development, a second reason they make a good mulch. The only nitrogen deficiency of significance and that could possibly impair the growth of established plants occurs only if the chips are incorporated into the soil. Generally by the time that happens, decomposition is well underway anyway.