Mulching · Houston
How mulch is made
Wood can come off a grinder and go out as mulch with no aging at all. Ours sits three to six months first. This clip follows the wood across our yard, from the grinder to the aging rows.
It starts as land-clearing wood
Our aged native mulch starts as wood from land-clearing and tree work around Houston, and we take it in ourselves. Some of it arrives as single grind, land-clearing material that has been put through a grinder once and sent to us.
Tree jobs and land-clearing jobs also bring in rough-cut trees, hauled in on end-dump trailers. Those get ground here, and that is where the video opens. Two excavators with grapples feed stumps, logs and brush into the grinder, and the ground wood comes off the conveyor onto a pile.
The wood is a blend of indigenous trees and includes cedar. We water the material while it is being ground.
It ages three to six months
Fresh grind does not go out the gate. The haul truck in the second half of the video carries it across the yard to the aging rows, where it sits three to six months before we sell it.
In that time each pile is flipped twice. During dry stretches we water it from our own on-site water source, with a big sprinkler hose laid on top of the aging pile.
Aging brings the pile up to high heat. That heat kills seeds or plants that came in with the wood, so they do not sprout in your bed.
Why we do not sell it fresh
Texas does not require mulch to age. Mulch grinding is exempt from the state's composting rules (30 TAC 332.3), so nothing stops a yard from selling wood before it is done.
Mulch sold before it is done, sometimes called sour mulch, goes anaerobic and ferments. University research documents the smell that follows: vinegar, ammonia, sulfur or silage. Finished mulch smells like earth.
We age ours anyway. We make material ahead of demand, so no pile gets rushed out to fill an order.
Screened and ground twice more
None of this part shows in the clip. It happens after the material comes off the aging rows.
First it runs through the trommel, a rotating drum screen. Then it goes through the grinder twice more. It finishes through a 1.5 inch screen, which is what gives it a consistent texture.
Watch a trommel screen at work
Natural or dyed
The finished material goes out two ways. Sold as is in natural brown, it is Aged Native Mulch. Dyed black with a carbon-based colorant, it is Black Mulch. Both go through the same trommel and final grind, so the texture is the same before the color goes on.
Red mulch is different material. It is clean kiln-dried dimensional lumber, dyed red. It cannot age long or it will not take the color.
Next: proper mulch application for your garden beds
Whatever color you pick, ask where the wood came from and how long it aged.