Thanks, OKSooner. After I posted, I felt sort of bad since I wasn’t dissing the poster. I was simply pointing out some concerns and issues we have dealt with. I should have written that being in a relative urban county, needles and such are common in a lot of our area. However, every county (the most beautiful, pristine and nice) can still have a fungus or tree disease that weakened/or killed the tree. If that is in the mulch, it will spread not only to your tree.. but every tree around it.
Well, now that you mention it I didn’t find any diss in your post but I’m the one who used the word “sucker”. No diss intended orson, but that free stuff at the dump comes from who knows where and always has some extra stuff in it...