Mulch

It's a sad truth of the urban landscape: Today's street tree is tomorrow's mulch. But in the foothills of Santa Barbara, a former stuntman and onetime sea-urchin diver named Rob Bjorklund turns fallen city trees into flooring, mantels, plaques and massive, irregularly shaped conference tables that appear to be suited for a wizard's laboratory. He uses oaks toppled by storms; eucalyptuses leveled by bulldozers; trees taken down for being too old, too sick, too close to foundations, too hard on sidewalks.

Even after they were scooped from waters off Redondo Beach, trucked across the city, hauled over the mountains and unloaded in the Mojave Desert 100 miles away, those dead sardines are still causing headaches. The Victorville organic composting company that accepted 175 tons of fish, which expired en masse in the King Harbor marina earlier this month, must now deal with concerns that a neurotoxin found in the sardines could contaminate their prized mulch. Dean Roberts, general manager of American Organics, said the powerful neurotoxin found in the sardines ?

Thank you for your article on mulching ["Mulch: Earthy Mix, Garden Fix," May 26]. I've been preaching the benefits of mulching to one customer for a long time. When I arrived at her Santa Clarita house, she had your article laid out for me to read! I didn't get a chance to read all of it. She was paying me to garden, not read papers, but I look forward to finishing it. Deep water + deep roots + mulch = healthy plants. Willie Arste Sugarbush Landscape Care Castaic

It's a sad truth of the urban landscape: Today's street tree is tomorrow's mulch. But in the foothills of Santa Barbara, a former stuntman and onetime sea-urchin diver named Rob Bjorklund turns fallen city trees into flooring, mantels, plaques and massive, irregularly shaped conference tables that appear to be suited for a wizard's laboratory. He uses oaks toppled by storms; eucalyptuses leveled by bulldozers; trees taken down for being too old, too sick, too close to foundations, too hard on sidewalks.

The Los Angeles Board of Zoning Appeals ruled Tuesday that a mulching operation, denounced by Sunland residents as a smelly nuisance, is in the wrong zone and must stop operating. The ruling upholds action taken by the Office of Zoning Administration and the Department of Building and Safety concerning Valley Roll-Off in the 9800 block of Wentworth Street. Both agencies determined that the business, which operates on land zoned for agricultural use, should be in an industrial zone.

Mulch has been an important ingredient in any well-planned landscape, and now in the midst of a five-year drought, it's more crucial than ever for Californians. You don't have to be an avid gardener to benefit from the addition of mulch to your garden. The simple act of placing a 2- to 4-inch layer of mulch on your soil automatically reduces landscape water consumption by 10% to 15%, practically eliminates laborious weedingand saves on fertilizer costs. What is mulch?

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will stop selling cypress mulch from Louisiana, where environmentalists say the logging of the tree threatens the coast's eroding wetlands and puts the state at greater risk from hurricanes. Wal-Mart will refuse to buy cypress mulch harvested, bagged or manufactured in Louisiana "to extend the life span of the coastal wetland forests," spokeswoman Tara Raddohl said. Bentonville, Ark.

The city of Los Angeles will join several other communities in Los Angeles and Orange counties in an effort to educate residents about the benefits of recycling grass clippings right in their own backyards. The Los Angeles City Council Tuesday approved spending $100,000 to join the Los Angeles and Orange Counties' Regional Grasscycling Campaign, which is designed to reduce the amount of grass picked up in green barrels. The money will come from the city's Used Oil Collection Trust Fund.

In late fall with winter fast approaching, gardening takes on an elegiac air. When fog mantels the coast and Santa Anas snake through our canyons, I venture outdoors and try to see in the end of things a beginning. Of the chores that I perform, none is as simple or as salutary as spreading mulch. Let garden books devote pages to plants. Scant space, in my opinion, is devoted to the restorative power of leaf mold, duff and wood chips raked about the yard.

Walk along a small plot of tomatoes at University of California Kearney Agricultural Center and it's easy to spot which ones were planted in a silver-colored plastic mulch system. Those tomato bushes are noticeably bigger and have more green fruits hanging on the vines than those planted on bare soil. The plastic mulch system is nothing fancy, just a long plastic sheet that covers the rows where the tomatoes are planted.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will stop selling cypress mulch from Louisiana, where environmentalists say the logging of the tree threatens the coast's eroding wetlands and puts the state at greater risk from hurricanes. Wal-Mart will refuse to buy cypress mulch harvested, bagged or manufactured in Louisiana "to extend the life span of the coastal wetland forests," spokeswoman Tara Raddohl said. Bentonville, Ark.

For months, mammoth grinders have been busily chewing up what little remains of the old El Toro Marine base. But instead of trucking tons of wood and glass from hangars and barracks to the county landfill, Irvine-based Tierra Verde Industries is in the midst of an extraordinary recycling project: reducing 300,000 tons of Marine history to mulch and topsoil.

THOSE late April rains were a pleasant surprise, but from now until autumn, gardeners need to stay focused on irrigation. There are still a few things you can plant this month, but save any big jobs until after mid-October when the better, and -- one hopes -- wetter, fall planting season begins. Jungle gardening The rapidly warming weather makes this a good time to plant subtropicals such as hibiscus and bougainvillea, or gingers and bananas.

From a distance, the 70-foot-high stack looks like a volcano in the mist. Up close, it's nothing more than a smoldering mountain of densely packed mulch, a local eyesore that caught fire here Christmas Day and is still burning. For weeks, local and state officials bickered over who would pay to put out the flames. Residents, fed up with the smoke and ash, appeared at a City Council meeting in gas masks to protest the delay.

The termites are coming! The termites are coming! But they aren't coming in mulch harvested from trees downed by Katrina in the Gulf Coast region. They come every spring. In what may be the greatest e-mail hoax since one involving the supposed sale of a Mrs. Fields cookie recipe, e-rumors have been flying about termite-infested mulch being shipped to big-box stores nationwide. The e-mail -- origins unknown -- warns: "Be very careful about buying mulch this year.

A man with a leaf in his head watches an indefatigable gull dropping a piss-clam on the rocks to break it open. Repeat. Repeat. He is an inlander who loves the margins of the sea, and everywhere he goes he carries a bag of earth on his back. Why is he down in the tide marsh? Why is he gathering salt hay in bushel baskets crammed to his chin? "It is a blue and northern air," he says, as if the shiftings of the sky had taught him husbandry.

For months, mammoth grinders have been busily chewing up what little remains of the old El Toro Marine base. But instead of trucking tons of wood and glass from hangars and barracks to the county landfill, Irvine-based Tierra Verde Industries is in the midst of an extraordinary recycling project: reducing 300,000 tons of Marine history to mulch and topsoil.

Mulch is so basic to gardening that it's become a verb. To mulch. It can even be conjugated. I mulch, he mulches, nous mulchons. In fact, mulch is a noun derived from some kind of old German or Middle English term for largely rotting material: leaves, grass clippings, hay, ground-up wood, pebbles. Newspaper works. Mulch is anything that can be spread on top of soil to keep spring rain in and summer heat out.

Thank you for your article on mulching ["Mulch: Earthy Mix, Garden Fix," May 26]. I've been preaching the benefits of mulching to one customer for a long time. When I arrived at her Santa Clarita house, she had your article laid out for me to read! I didn't get a chance to read all of it. She was paying me to garden, not read papers, but I look forward to finishing it. Deep water + deep roots + mulch = healthy plants. Willie Arste Sugarbush Landscape Care Castaic

Mulch is so basic to gardening that it's become a verb. To mulch. It can even be conjugated. I mulch, he mulches, nous mulchons. In fact, mulch is a noun derived from some kind of old German or Middle English term for largely rotting material: leaves, grass clippings, hay, ground-up wood, pebbles. Newspaper works. Mulch is anything that can be spread on top of soil to keep spring rain in and summer heat out.