More About Our Products

Here’s a cool story behind the creation of Midnight Mulch™, the best black mulch in Nashville!

In the 1990s, Tony Emmanuel, founder of The Mulch Company, was on one of many tours of the Jack Daniel’s Distillery. The distillery is a Nashville icon and Tony has always enjoyed taking visiting friends and family members to tour the distillery, and then to lunch at Miss Mary Bobo’s Boarding House & Restaurant.

One of the tour guides recognized Tony from his many visits, and offered him a behind the scenes look at the filtering process for whiskey production. Jack Daniel’s whiskey is filtered through a special type of granulated charcoal. After the charcoal was used to purify a whiskey batch, the charcoal was dumped in heaps out behind the Jack Daniel’s Distillery. Tony saw these heaps, and knowing that black mulch was in high demand, he had an idea. A consultation with Tony’s business partner, an appointment with the Jack Daniel’s management, some charcoal testing with a soil scientist’s help, and several truckloads later, The Mulch Company was the new owner of huge piles of charcoal! Soon after, Midnight Mulch™ was created, a beautiful, soil-amending mix of aged oak, ash, maple, other hardwoods, leaf compost, and charcoal.

As it turns out, charcoal helps make the best mulch! Charcoal has horticultural value as it is a natural soil purifier. It helps remove chemicals from the soil that may have accumulated due to the overuse of artificial fertilizers. Not only does the charcoal give the Midnight Mulch™ a deep, gorgeous black aesthetic look, but charcoal-based types of mulch help rejuvenate and purify the soil.

Our Mocha Mulch™ is our most affordable mulch because all of the ingredients we use to make it are readily available to us. For example, the Midnight Mulch™ comes in at a higher price point because pure charcoal must be imported to our mulch yards for processing. But with our popular Mocha Mulch™, we can get all of the natural ingredients we need to make it from local sources right here in Nashville.

Here is a smart gardener’s tip for Mocha Mulch™! Because this garden mulch product is natural and organic, it does weather at the surface. Rain and sun will eventually change and lighten the color of the organic mulch after perhaps three or four months. To remedy this, take a leaf rake with flexible tongs and scrape off the top quarter-inch of Mocha Mulch™, and it will look brand new again. Place the scraped-off bits onto your compost heap. Because it is a 100% natural product, it will be a great addition to your compost!

Gardeners use Piney Mulch™ because of its acidic nature and because of its aesthetic appeal. Piney Mulch™ is made from 100% pine bark. Some plants and shrubs thrive in acidic conditions and need a good acid-based mulch and soil to help boost growth. Roses, azaleas, and rhododendrons love acidic soil, hence the appeal of pine bark mulch.

Much of Tennessee rests on limestone shelf rock. Limestone is very alkaline, which is why pine trees do not grow in great numbers in Tennessee. We have to source our pine bark from states to the south of us, like Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Sourcing from afar means more freight costs and a higher priced mulch. However, the nutritional benefits of Piney Mulch™ for your plants and the product’s deep reddish brown luster make this beautiful mulch worth every penny.

Piney Nuggets™ come from the bark of pine trees. Piney Nuggets™ are 100% pine bark.

So what’s the difference between Piney Mulch™ and Piney Nuggets™? When bark is removed from a pine tree with a debarker, the removed material is just bark. No wood. That is Piney Nuggets™. However, when the Piney Nuggets™ are run through another machine, a grinder, the nuggets are ground down to make Piney Mulch™, a finer, smaller-size mulch product. Piney Mulch™ and Piney Nuggets™ are made from the same ingredient, pine bark, but it is the difference in the size of each product that sets the two apart. Both products are considered some of the best mulch in Nashville, and both have excellent properties for acid-loving plants. The distinction is simply one of personal preference and aesthetic interest.

Playsoft Playground Mulch™ is designed specifically for children’s playgrounds. When this product is installed in the fall zones of a playground at a depth of eight inches or more, it helps cushion a child’s fall. The fall zones are those areas around playground equipment, such as monkey bars, swings, and slides.

To make the mulch, we grind virgin wood chips in our grinder (no recycled materials whatsoever). We grind the wood chips into mulch that is so fine it will absorb a child’s fall. Our Playsoft Playground Mulch™ is inspected and certified by the International Playground Equipment Manufacturer’s Association. The product complies fully with their standards, giving you an organic, safe, soft, impact-absorbing mulch product.

Walking Trailmix™ is the same mulch product as our Chocolate Chip Mulch™, except without the colorant. This mulch is shredded into the size of a postage stamp and is perfect for walking trails, garden paths, and natural sidewalks. If you are planning a vegetable or flower garden, consider installing Walking Trailmix™ in the garden. Design your garden in a grid pattern with six feet beds and Walking Trailmix™ on either side. This way, you are not compacting the soil when you walk on it, as the Walking Trailmix™ will absorb the impact of your footsteps and wheelbarrow wheels.

Using Walking Trailmix™ in a garden keeps foot traffic out of the growing areas. And ergonomically speaking, it is much easier to lean over and work in a garden patch when you have Walking Trailmix™ installed on both sides of the garden bed.

One of our most popular products, Chocolate Chip Mulch™ gets its name from the deep brown color achieved during processing. The mulch is ground to the size of a postage stamp, perfect for gardens, flower beds, shrubs, and trees. While the mulch is being ground, we color the mulch with a liquid blend of iron oxide and granulated charcoal. Not only are both colorants free of chemicals or artificial additives, but both iron oxide and granulated charcoal have distinct horticultural benefits:

Iron oxide is commonly used in gardens if the soil is deficient in iron. You can tell your soil has an iron deficiency if your plant leaves appear more yellow than green. With iron oxide added to the soil, plants receive the iron they need to grow healthy, strong, and green!

Granulated charcoal acts as a soil purifier. Charcoal attracts the harmful parts of artificial fertilizers (like soluble salts) that tend to build up in over-fertilized soil. The granulated charcoal used to color Chocolate Chip Mulch™ has the added benefit of cleansing the soil and removing harmful chemicals that can stunt plant growth.

For a longer-lasting, dark colored mulch that significantly improves overall plant growth and health, choose Chocolate Chip Mulch™!