Blogs

The mulch season is upon us and we want to remind everyone about our consumer website, colorenrichedmulch.com. This site is designed to answer all the questions a retail customer might have about colored mulch. It provides safety information on toxicity testing and heavy metals. It offers consumers advice on preparing their beds, choosing a color and finding locations that sell Heartland Enriched colored mulch. Our “Where to Buy” page is the most visited page on the website (59% of all visitors view this page) with as many as 126 hits per day during peak season.

By: Scott Thompson, Vice President Sales&Marketing

By: Robert Rynk, Agricultural Engineering, State University of New York (SUNY) Cobleskill and Richard Buggeln, Center for Industrial Services, University of Tennessee

Introduction
During the latter months of 2008, with much assistance from Amerimulch, we conducted a survey to better explain the factors that lead to fires at mulch and compost production facilities. We also wanted to learn how to successfully deal with a fire when one does occur. In short, we are searching for the “Do’s and Don’ts” of fire prevention and response.

It is difficult to pick up a trade journal these days and not read more than one article competing for one of our industry’s most valuable resources, wood fiber. From new pellet fuel plants to lumber mills shutting down to land clearing coming to a hault, all the news is not good. It makes you wonder what our industry will look like ten years from today.

Almost two years after the fact, more than 22 states around the US have declared a “drought”, and a total of 36 anticipate severe water shortages by 2013*. Whenever drought conditions surface, the combination of environmental effect, coupled with a lack of awareness and inaction by public regulators, almost always converge to fail the consumer. In this industry “consumers” are large commercial and private property owners and they are always the last ones to be notified they can’t flush, shower or water their lawns.

The Steparator™ is a unique screening machine that features a patented, stepped deck, which results in a very high open area per unit of surface area. The machine substantially increases through-put without the risk of blinding or plugging. Oversize material is oriented in direction of flow and rejected, thus improving uniformity of accepted product size.

By: Vince Hundt, Company Co-Founder
Rotochopper, Inc.

Landscape mulch is getting to be a more sophisticated and complex subject every year. Twenty years ago mulch was simply bark from trees. It was what customers got when they asked for mulch. It was cheap and plentiful, like the diesel fuel used to haul it. Then, in 1990 in Cleveland, AmeriMulch invented the idea of colored mulch. That changed everything.

By: Tom Kurtz, Kurtz Bros.

Kurtz Bros. is a third generation family business located in Ohio that began as a commercial topsoil company. In the late 1970s the company began to focus on organic recycling and mulch production. In the early 1990s, Kurtz Bros. was one of the pioneering companies in the colored mulch business and eventually sold Amerimulch to ChromaScape.