I have found a good supply of almost composted wood chips. These are brown to black and very soft.

The city trimmed some trees last fall, and dumped the chips on the lot where they store their gravel and sand. I asked if I could have them and they were VERY glad to get rid of them. They even offered to load them for me.

I got one pickup load yesterday, and it looks like 5 or 6 more loads to go. Between the free chips and the free cow manure I found I will be busy this summer.

Lucky!!

Most cities will give them away for free.
Whenever the company that trims trees from the power lines are working on our side of town, they dump the chipped stuff right here. (We asked them to) It saves them from toting the stuff miles away to their site. The partially decomposed stuff from a year or so ago is good. The fresh stuff is really coarsely shredded. But we put it on our dirt roads to keep the dust down.

I just picked up my second truck-load of free wood chips yesterday