CWTurner
Omono
I have been using stone dust as a component of my soil and needed to upgrade to some good lava.
From this post, https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/lower-ny-lava.19185/ , I found out about Partek Peat Corporation in Great Meadows NJ.
This company's main products are for baseball fields and other clay courts. Looking through their website, it appears they use lava dust on their baseball warning track product. So I suppose they grind the lava up for that purpose and somehow found a market for a 1/4" graded lava.
Anyway, last month I decided to make the 2 hour trip. This is a lovely, rural and hilly area of N.J. The lava looked like nice stuff and the price was just $10.25 per 50 lb. bag! I even shared some of this with @Microscopic when I got home.
Yesterday, I sifted it out and I am very impressed. Here's what I ended up with:
> 1/4" about 3/4 of the bag
< 1/4" about 1/4 of the bag
If I was looking for 3/16" to 3/8" particle size I wouldn't even have had to sift.
Best of all, there was only about 1 cup of fines, and virtually no dust! (guess they save that for the warning track)
There are a couple shades of red in there, and a bit of charcoal color. I highly recommend this product if you're within driving distance.
On a whim, I also purchased one bag of their Pro's Choice Select Pro Red which looks to be a red clay colored DE granule similar to NAPA 8822. I'll see how that weathers before using it in my mixes.
CW
From this post, https://www.bonsainut.com/threads/lower-ny-lava.19185/ , I found out about Partek Peat Corporation in Great Meadows NJ.
This company's main products are for baseball fields and other clay courts. Looking through their website, it appears they use lava dust on their baseball warning track product. So I suppose they grind the lava up for that purpose and somehow found a market for a 1/4" graded lava.
Anyway, last month I decided to make the 2 hour trip. This is a lovely, rural and hilly area of N.J. The lava looked like nice stuff and the price was just $10.25 per 50 lb. bag! I even shared some of this with @Microscopic when I got home.
Yesterday, I sifted it out and I am very impressed. Here's what I ended up with:
> 1/4" about 3/4 of the bag
< 1/4" about 1/4 of the bag
If I was looking for 3/16" to 3/8" particle size I wouldn't even have had to sift.
Best of all, there was only about 1 cup of fines, and virtually no dust! (guess they save that for the warning track)
There are a couple shades of red in there, and a bit of charcoal color. I highly recommend this product if you're within driving distance.
On a whim, I also purchased one bag of their Pro's Choice Select Pro Red which looks to be a red clay colored DE granule similar to NAPA 8822. I'll see how that weathers before using it in my mixes.
CW
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