Kobe Mulch: Artisanal, Local, Sustainable

The refined estates of the Santa Barbara area are set to become the latest beneficiary of the Kobe Mulch craze that’s suddenly sweeping America. Modeled on Japan’s famed Kobe Beef, Kobe Mulch is an artisanal mulch that’s produced from specially selected wood chips and subjected to a series of complex, labor-intensive treatments that make it both the most sought-after and the most costly mulch in the world. And Kobe Mulch is also revolutionizing local farming practices as well as helping to save the environment.

MULCH PRIMER. For the benefit of the non-gardener, it will help to know that mulch is a layer of organic material, usually some type of wood chips or bark, that is spread on the surface of the soil to conserve moisture, discourage the growth of weeds, and protect the soil from erosion and extremes of temperature. Mulch is in common use in modern sustainable gardens, and in fact is considered a basic element of the contemporary sustainable landscape. Conventional mulch is often derived from wood chips created during tree trimming operations, or from minimally processed bark that is a by-product of the lumber industry.

THE KOBE DIFFERENCE. Kobe Mulch differs from conventional mulch in several ways. It comes from special feedstock, the chipped wood of the once-rare Hoki Pine (Pinus retrofractus Dougl.), a native of southern Japan. The wood of the Hoki Pine offers several advantages over the random materials used to produce ordinary mulch. Hoki wood is more durable, has a more open grain structure which provides better insulation (“loft” in the terminology of mulching science), and it has superior marbling and color. But that’s just the beginning. It’s the special treatment that turns Hoki wood into the sought-after Kobe Mulch. More on that later.

THE HOKI REVOLUTION. The Hoki Pine, an endangered species in its native habitat, grows with astonishing speed in Southern California, and is drought tolerant, pest-free, and very easy to grow. It has been the source of garden mulch in Japan at least since the reign of Emperor Jimmu (585-503 BCE). But until very recently the Hoki pine was unknown in the Western world. A consortium of horticultural professionals quietly began to import it to California in the early 2000s. Extensive plantations of Hoki, as the growers refer to it, quickly took hold in the remote Santa Ynez and Cuyama Valleys, replacing failed ostrich farms with a zero-impact crop that has turned out to be a big moneymaker for the growers. In fact, some ag experts anticipate that by 2020 Hoki production will surpass that of strawberries, Santa Barbara County’s leading crop. Hoki is also resistant to the increased summer heat that is expected to occur as a result of global warming. Currently, growers are developing localized cultivars of Hoki that are even faster growing and better adapted to local climates. Because of its speedy metabolism, a Hoki Pine seedling can grow to 40 feet tall and be ready for harvest in 2 to 3 years, a growth rate unheard of in tree crops until now. And this can be done with no fertilizers, no pesticides, and no supplemental irrigation beyond normal rainfall. In fact, the Hoki requires virtually no care at all between the time is it planted and when it’s harvested. A boon to labor-challenged farmers and a genuine benefit to the environment, the Hoki has quietly become the darling of local agriculture.

Steve Claymore, third-generation landowner in the Buellton area of the Santa Ynez Valley, has been growing 1,200 acres of Hoki for nearly 10 years now. “We’ve been blown away by this plant.” says Claymore. “After struggling with Pinot Noir and other wine grapes, row crops, buffalo, corn mazes, and those disastrous ostriches, we feel we’ve finally come up with a way to make our land profitable while helping to save the environment at the same time.” Claymore is not the only one who’s wild about Hoki. In fact, last year local Hoki growers formed the SBHPA, the Santa Barbara Hoki Producers Association, to promote and further develop the crop. Environmentalists like the Hoki too, citing its drought tolerance, friendliness to wildlife, and resemblance to local native vegetation. All in all, Hoki is poised to transform agricultural practices in Santa Barbara County and beyond.

ANCIENT MULCH CRAFT. But that’s only the beginning of the story. Once the wood from the Hoki Pine is harvested, the real work of crafting Kobe Mulch begins. Turning Hoki into Kobe is a labor-intensive 2- to 3-year process that calls on the best skills of highly trained artisans. Santa Barbara’s Kobe Mulch producers underwent a rigorous 2-year long traditional training regimen in Japan, living in a mountaintop hermitage in the remote Kanagawa Prefecture and studying under the aging masters of the craft. There are currently only 7 certified Kobe Mulch artisans in the United States, and 3 of them are based in Santa Barbara County. Artisans adopt traditional Japanese names, giving up their American ones. (For security reasons, they must remain anonymous.)

Much of the process of Kobe Mulch making is never divulged to outsiders, and the craftsmen who come through the Kanagawa training are sworn to secrecy on penalty of death. But this much is known: the harvested Hoki wood is first chipped by hand, using special Japanese santoku knives made from high carbon steel in the venerated Honyaki knife-making tradition. Chipping a Hoki tree for Kobe production can require the work of 3 or more artisans over a 4-month period. Before moving on to the other steps in Kobe Mulch production and eventually becoming an “honored adept” Kobe maker, the trainee must spend a full year just chipping wood. The angle of the cuts, the speed at which they are made, and even the clothing worn by the artisans, everything is considered critical to the eventual quality of the product.

The chipped wood is then soaked for six weeks in a bath of sake lees, vegan rennet, and the specially-aged urine of the Hokkaido mountain goat (Altonantus reflexus Fujuki) This raises the grain and imparts certain qualities to the wood. At this critical stage, timing and temperature are closely monitored. Once the soaking process is completed, the wood is sun-dried on a southeast-facing sandy loam slope of 12 to 18 degrees pitch; this must be done between the vernal equinox and Labor Day when weather conditions are favorable.

Next comes the most critical, and most laborious, phase of production. The chips are individually hand-rubbed five times per day, seven days a week, to stimulate the production of lignins and develop the unique grain structure that is the hallmark of genuine Kobe Mulch. Two of the rubbings must be done in the middle of the night, resulting in little sleep for the craftsmen during this critical period. In the traditional method, wheat-free tamari sauce and organic wasabi powder are massaged into the chips at this stage. But the safety risks involved with such intensive contact with the potent wasabi as well as concerns about the high sodium content of the end product have led local producers to modify the process for the American market. They use a proprietary compound that reportedly includes Alma Rosa Chardonnay, fermented cherimoya skins, and toasted walnut oil.

After 9 weeks of massaging and ageing, the Kobe Mulch is ready for the final stage of production: the seasoning period that will take up the remainder of the long process of making Kobe Mulch. Not much is known about this phase, and it is done under tight security.

The finished mulch is hand-packaged in small bags of 400-thread count hemp batiste and stacked on pallets for eventual delivery to customers. Because of its high value, the location of the stored mulch is a closely guarded secret, and delivery is done in unmarked vehicles.

THE SANTA BARBARA ANGLE. It wasn’t by chance that the Kobe Mulch industry came to the Santa Barbara area. Early on, growers and producers saw a potential market for their pricey product in the rambling estates of Montecito, Hope Ranch, and other local enclaves of wealthy gardening enthusiasts. At a stunning $500 per square foot (including professional installation), Kobe Mulch isn’t for the ordinary gardener. “We looked at potential markets up and down the West Coast, and concluded that Santa Barbara was THE place for this product,” says Cuyama Valley farmer and SBHPA President Tom Chipman, “And of course we’re happy to be part of the growing re-localization movement. We’d rather ship to East Valley Road than to the East Coast or elsewhere. We love making the product available to our neighbors, the wealthy celebrities and disgraced corporate CEOs of the local area.” Local author and amateur gardener T.C. Boyle is rumored to be a big customer, and truckloads of Kobe Mulch have been spotted entering the palatial estate of Oprah Winfrey in recent months.

IMITATORS. As with any popular product, genuine Kobe Mulch has its imitators. Non-certified producers have been known to use commercially available stainless steel knives to chip the Hoki wood, to substitute cheap soy, palm, or other oils for the walnut oil that is essential to the rubbing process, and even to skip the critical midnight massages. Each nugget of genuine Kobe Mulch is stamped with the ancient seal of the traditional Japanese producers, which can only be applied to material that is produced by trained masters.

Sample of Genuine Kobe Mulch

USER RESPONSE. Local users are delighted with Kobe Mulch. They report larger flower production, fewer pest problems, and better feng shui among the benefits of using the pricey ground covering. Kobe aficionados reportedly become virtual addicts of the product and have been known to take out lawns, fill in swimming pools, and even demolish guest houses and outbuildings to create more space for their beloved mulch.

USING KOBE MULCH. Kobe is hand-applied like any other mulch: three to four inches thick over the entire planted area. Once it’s in place, there’s no care needed, other than maintaining an even cover. The mulch will last for a year or longer, depending on the amount of watering and rainfall the area receives.

WHERE TO GET KOBE MULCH. Kobe Mulch is currently only available direct from the producers. For more information, go to http://www.owendell.com/kobe

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Learn about sustainable landscaping the fast, fun way. Join Santa Barbara landscape architects Owen Dell and Billy Goodnick as they host the popular sustainable landscaping sitcom Garden Wise Guys on City TV channel 18, County TV channel 20, or on the web. 

In the current episode, “Lawn and Order,” the Wise Guys end up in jail for the crime of “lawn abuse.” They have big adventures while trying to get a dismissal from the judge.

And watch for the next episode coming in October: a monster movie spoof about watershed-friendly landscaping.

Garden Wise Guys is sponsored by local water agencies and offers lots of great information on how you can make your landscaping easier to live with and kinder to the environment. Check it out! 

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I’m not going to mention any names, but there’s a town in San Diego County that just did an incredibly stupid thing. Towns do stupid things all the time, of course, but for sheer obliviousness this one really stands out. Some time back a developer with a plan for developing a blighted property in the middle of this town began construction on his community-friendly, mixed-use, LEED-blessed, low carb, high fiber building.

Part of the plan was an underground parking garage that would keep quite a few cars off the street. After he had excavated about 30 feet down he hit ground water. Turns out there’s a perched water table under most of the town and under much of the neighboring town as well. It’s been there forever and has caused problems all over the area ever since people began building things there. Water leaks out of the cliffs and causes them to collapse. Water undermines buildings. Water fills basements. Water deteriorates pavement.

Still, the water, for all the problems it creates, is fresh and clean, as testing proved when the developer first hatched his Bright Idea.

The Bright Idea was to incorporate a cistern into the building and start using the water for flushing toilets, watering the landscaping, and other uses. He figured everybody would win with this approach: he’d have a ready supply of fresh, local, wholesome water for his needs, two communities would have a long-standing problem mitigated at no cost to the taxpayers, and neighboring property owners wouldn’t have to worry about their buildings collapsing into sinkholes. Oh, and the area is under a Level Two Drought Alert with up to 20 percent mandatory conservation, so it’s not like they can’t use the water.

Mr. Developer went to the City with his Bright Idea and they wiped the smile off his face in a hurry. “Sorry,” they said, “there’s no place on our forms for that kind of thing. You’re going to have to forget it. Oh, and you had better figure out someplace to get rid of all that water you’re going to have to pump out of your parking garage.” Long story short, he sucked over 26 acre feet of water out of the ground and spilled it, with the blessing of the City, onto a local beach. He’s still pumping and dumping water today, and will be for the life of the building. In the midst of a drought, with water in short supply, in a community that gets a little over 10 inches of rain in an average year and has had recent annual rainfall as low as under 3 inches, in a community that is suffering with no end in sight, the authorities chose to insist on throwing away water. No doubt there are other city officials in the same building who are working day and night to encourage citizens to conserve water. Go figure. 

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WHAT’S COMPOST?

Compost is nothing more than plant parts broken down by microorganisms into stuff that looks like soil. It’s the most natural, and the most common, recycling program on earth and it’s happening in your yard right now whether you do anything about it or not. In fact, here’s a case where benign neglect is half the battle. By allowing leaves to remain where they fall, you mimic nature’s own composting system whereby the leaves (called “duff” in a natural system) decay in place and the nutrients are returned directly to the plant in a perfect, elegant little loop. Nature doesn’t need you for this. Go back to your hammock.

THE DUMB WAY

Compare this with the really dumb conventional practice of raking everything up on Saturday morning, putting it in trash bags and sending it to the landfill. You’ve gotta ask, “Why are people doing this?” The truth is, they don’t know. Their fathers did it and their fathers’ fathers and so on, and without questioning they, too, take rake in hand as dutiful suburban homeowners and repeat this folly of middle-class wastefulness. See, that stuff is a resource, not a waste material. Where are you taking it?? It’s organic fertilizer waiting to go to work! When you throw it away and then have to bring in, at considerable expense, inferior nutrients in the form of chemical fertilizers, you’ve created several problems at once — the waste of a resource, the effort of removing it, the cost of disposing of it, the impact on landfills, the expense and effort of buying and applying fertilizer, the damage done to plants and soils by the harsh, salt-laden elements in the fertilizer and the loss of natural mulch on the soil surface. You’ve gone to a lot of work to make things worse.

So perhaps you could write this down and tape it to the wall in your toolshed, or maybe have it engraved into the handle of your leaf rake:

LEAVE THE LEAVES!

(Why do you think they CALL them leaves??)

That way, when guilt finally drives you out into the yard, the last thing you’ll be tempted to do is destroy the automatic composting system that’s under your shrubbery.

SOME EXCEPTIONS

FIRE: Many people live in areas where wildfire is a concern. Naturally, the more dry stuff you have laying around when a fire comes, the greater risk that your house will burn down. Even if that doesn’t happen, the leaf litter will burn up under the plants and kill them by toasting off the bark; not a happy scenario. If you’re at a high risk for fire, keep leaf litter down to a minimum. Rake it up and use it to feed your compost pile, which is described below.

DISEASE: Certain diseases are made worse by allowing litter to collect under plants. For instance, Camellia petal blight is commoner when the fallen flower parts are allowed to remain on the ground. Some fruit tree and rose diseases are also spread this way. If you have susceptible plants, first ask yourself why, and remove them if you can’t come up with a good answer. If you decide they should stay, resign yourself to the constant chore of cleaning up after them.

VERMIN: People talk about how rats and other filthy creatures live in mulch, but I have never seen any evidence that this is actually true. I think it’s another urban myth that’s been passed along from generation to generation like the alligators in the sewers. The only critters I know of that like natural duff are beneficial ones — earthworms, soil bacteria, sowbugs and other members of the Leaf Reincarnation System.

BEYOND DUFF: TAKING CHARGE OF YOUR ROTTING FOLIAGE

What most people think of when they hear the word “compost” is a pile or bin of steaming yard waste out behind the garage. It conjures up images of long days spent turning it over and over with a rusty, hand-blistering pitchfork, watering it with gallons of sweat, being chased by clouds of irate fruit-flies and ending up with a puny pile of brown dirt that looks no different than something you could have swept up off the driveway.

WHY COMPOST? Compost seems like an act of penance, a virtuous undertaking whose reward may only come in another life. Compost seems like a sacred practice of the lost tribes, something “real” gardeners do, in private and for mysterious reasons only they understand and are sworn on penalty of death never to tell the rest of us. So why would the average gardener ever want to compost?

IT’S NEEDED ELSEWHERE. Sometimes the valuable nutrients and microorganisms that are tied up in compost are needed elsewhere in the yard: a newly-planted flowerbed for instance, or the veggie garden. Even lawns benefit from compost. In fact, by manufacturing and spreading compost in your yard, you greatly reduce the need for fertilizing, and your plants will respond miraculously to being composted. I have seen many plants come back from the nearly-dead within a few weeks after an application of compost over the root zone and a couple of good waterings. You know what those “real” gardeners say? They say, “You can never have too much compost.” They say this with great feeling and a sense of wistfulness because no gardener has ever even had enough compost. Like sex and money, we imagine that others are getting more than we are.

THE GREENWASTE LOOP. Even in the best-planned yard, there comes a time when there’s just too much foliage of one kind or another to leave laying around. When the hedges get trimmed, when the leaves drop in the fall, when the lawn gets mowed — all these events and more produce sudden pulses of biomass into the system. Since these cannot be ignored, and since it’s no longer acceptable to send them to the landfill, the compost pile serves a basic need. Composting keeps green material (too bad it’s been given the unfortunate name “greenwaste”) within the system of your yard by breaking it down into a usable form.

Composting will help you be a lazier gardener because it solves so many problems at once. Instead of hauling waste out and fertilizer in, you make and spread compost. Instead of nursing sickly plants that are suffering from a lack of decent nutrients, you enjoy the beauty of healthy plants that are more resistant to pests and diseases.

how hard is this going to be?

“OK, I’m convinced. I’ll compost, I’ll compost already!” you say, “But how hard is this going to be? I don’t know if I can do this.” Relax. Composting is a lot easier than you think. Imagine something that you make in less than an hour, then mostly ignore for a few weeks, then spend less than an hour with to harvest the end product. Isn’t that easier than what you’re doing now?

Perhaps you’ve read complex “recipes” for compost, involving exact percentages of different materials, compost starter inoculants, special herbs gathered by tribal virgins, ram’s horns passed over the pile by the light of the full moon, dust of alabaster, eye of newt and all that. Well, I’ve read those recipes, too, and met the wild-eyed zealots who advocate their use. Maybe they work, maybe they don’t. Personally, I would advise you to forget them. Stuff rots. If you follow a few basic principles, the stuff rots somewhat faster. That’s it. OK? Let’s do it, then…

A COMPOST PROJECT:

Ingredients:

50% green stuff (lawn clippings, fresh leaves, etc.)

50% brown stuff (wood chips, branches, decrepit lawn furniture)

0% animal products (meat, fat, chili con carne, fish heads, dear departed Aunt Millie)

pitchfork

shredder-grinder or chipper (optional)

compost enclosure or manufactured composter (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. CHOP IT UP. Make stuff smaller by shredding or chipping. Shredding is what you do with leaves; you use a shredder-grinder. Chipping is what you do with branches; you use a chipper and then visit the chiropractor the next day to have him stop your entire upper body from twitching uncontrollably. Your goal is to beat the material up as much as you can and make it as small as you can. This increases the surface area to make it more accessible to the microbes that are going to do the real work. In my own garden, I chop everything up into tiny pieces with my pruning shears. This is less work than it sounds like; I just stand there snipping away until it’s a trash can full of little pieces of my yard. It’s more peaceful than using a noisy machine and the pruning shears are cheaper and easier to maintain than the machine and they don’t burn gasoline and pollute the air like the machine. Plus I have an awesome right wrist. Want to arm-wrestle?

2. PICK A SPOT. Find a place that’s out of the way, since compost piles aren’t usually all that good-looking. If you do have any friends who are real gardeners, they will admire your compost pile (you might want to invite them over now and then just so this will happen). Others will ignore it or look alarmed as they pass by, as if you had just audibly broken wind. If you choose a shady location, then the pile won’t dry out as quickly and you’ll be able to work in the shade when the time comes to harvest the material. You can even compost over an area where you’re planning to plant a garden; you’ll have a head start on fertility that way because nutrients from the compost will leach out into the soil below.

3. PILE IT UP. You don’t need a fancy compost tumbler or bin. Do that if you want to. A pile is fine. Now, one thing that’s going to happen as soon as you make the pile is heat. The pile will heat up and you want that to happen. Heating is the first stage of the process, and starting temperatures inside the pile should reach around 140-150 degrees in order to kill as many weed seeds and pathogens as possible. If your pile is too small, it won’t heat properly. If it’s too big, it may overheat. The ideal size is 3 x 3 feet up to 5 feet tall by 8 feet long and wide.

Mix about half green material and half brown material. You can add a bit of soil, or manure or organic nitrogen fertilizer to speed the process up a bit. Don’t bother with the compost inoculants (also called “starters”) that are sold in nurseries and catalogs; all the bacteria you need for compost are already in your raw materials. Some people layer their materials, others mix them together. Be careful not to allow layers of grass clippings to form, as they’ll rot and smell really unforgettably bad, rather than quietly composting as you want them to. Also, don’t include weeds that have gone to seed, because many seeds remain viable despite the heat of the process, and so you’ll just spread them back into the yard later. Kitchen scraps are fine, but no meat, OK? No meat, no fat. Compost piles are vegetarians. Animals will eat the meat long before it ever has a chance to break down.

By the way, if your pile is open to the outside world, and if you don’t turn it regularly, mice and rats will come to live in it. This is not so good. So either make sure your bin is completely enclosed or turn your pile every few days. Keep in mind that mice and rats can get through even very teeny openings. I’ve been told that a rat can dislocate the major bones in its body, kind of like taking a snap-together model plastic skeleton apart, push them through a half-inch diameter hole one-by-one, and easily enter the forbidden lair of, in this case, your composting operation. Kind of gives me the creeps. My otherwise impenetrable recycled plastic bins are open at the bottom; I wrapped the bottoms with aviary wire, which is like chicken wire but with ½ inch diameter holes that the critters can’t pass through. I’ve had no intruders since then.

When your pile’s made, water it down real well to get things going. Covering it with a tarp helps hold the heat and moisture in.

Now go away and let the pile do your work for you.

4. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? The pile will begin to heat right away. Maybe steam will come off it for a couple of days. Keep it moist during this stage, and maybe turn it once or twice. Have fun pushing your hand inside (you can’t resist) to marvel at the amount of heat generated. (Be careful, though. It can be hot enough in the center to really burn you.)

After a while, the pile will cool down and you’ll notice how much smaller it has gotten. That’s the signal that the intense period is over and a long process of breakdown and curing has begun. If you turn the pile often, you could have ready compost in as little as a month. But what’s the rush? Lazy yards should have lazy compost. Turn it now and then if you think of it, and definitely keep it moist. Pull back the outer layer once in a while to see how the center’s doing. After a few months, you’ll find a big heap of delicious brown material inside, ready to be harvested.

5. GATHERING THE COMPOST. Perfectionists sift the finished compost before using it. It’s not a bad idea, especially if you’re incorporating it into the soil. There are always chunks of undecomposed material in the mix and they can be awkward to work with. But it’s perfectly OK to simply shovel the compost up and haul it away to be used. If you do sift, use an old nursery flat, the kind they sell ground covers in, as a sifter. It’s free.

WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR COMPOST

Incorporating compost into flowerbeds and vegetable gardens will make a huge difference in the growth, vigor and productivity of the plants. You don’t need much; a half-inch layer dug into the top 6 inches of soil will do. Too much can actually stifle plant growth.

Spread compost in beds, under shrubs and trees, and even over the lawn. Water it in and stand back. Compost supplies everything your plants need and can be used in place of fertilizers. In some cases you may have special problems that need the addition of trace elements or other special treatment, but the compost will handle most of your plant nutrition.

WHAT ABOUT WORM COMPOST?

You can also enlist worms to do your dirty work. A worm compost bin can be a simple box or a ready-made multi-tiered annelid apartment complex. Either way, the idea is that specially trained red worms gobble up your kitchen scraps and garden clippings, and quickly turn them into ultra-rich worm compost that’s laden with good things your garden needs. In fact, worm compost is even better for your garden than plain vanilla compost. If you want to learn more about worm composting, visit http://www.cityfarmer.org/wormcomp61.html or see a pretty cool video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjjuYNilM60.

Composting is easy and it’s an essential part of closing the nutrient loop. A sustainable garden isn’t complete without some kind of composting system. Have fun with yours.

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