Bob's Organic Crusade

Gardening today has become a “Band-Aid society,” where nutrients have been stripped from the soil and chemicals added to try and bring life back, said Frank Thibodeaux of Bob’s Tree Preservation. The process has contributed to an unhealthy dependence on chemicals, he said.

“We’ve lost nature’s connection and all our plants have now become chemical dependent.”

Frank Thibodeaux — son of Robert “Bob” Thibodeaux, who started the tree preservation business forty years ago in Church Point — is on an organic crusade. He has watched how contractors removed valuable topsoil from properties in order to build, replacing it with a structural soil that’s mostly clay.

“Structural soil is dirt and dirt is biologically dead,” Thibodeaux explained. “That’s why it’s good to build upon.”

Once residents move into new developments, they must garden with a lackluster soil and many use chemicals to treat the problem. Thibodeaux recommends a more natural approach, restoring the soil biology with organic treatments. This may involve Bob’s organic mulch, created from recycled tree branches, as well as Bob’s organic fertilizers derived from Louisiana products such as fish oil and molasses and compost, also created by Bob’s through their recycling process.

“It’s a lifestyle that’s really catching on,” said Thibodeaux, who’s excited about the trend toward more organic, natural gardening. “If you have $100 to spend on landscaping, spend $90 on soil improvement.”

What we call organic gardening was nothing new to pre-World War II residents. Reusing kitchen waste for compost and recycling garden waste for mulch was an everyday occurrence. When munitions plants were left idle after World War II ended, they became chemical plants, producing nitrates for gardening, Thibodeaux explained.

Lack of resources for recycling gardening waste contributed to the problem. Bob’s would prune trees and throw the excess away. “For years you only had one solution—to go to the landfill,” Thibodeaux said. “We bit the bullet and bought this recycling equipment that was expensive and took up a lot of space but it was the right thing to do.”

Today, when Bob’s prunes or removes trees, they recycle the waste on site with mobile recycling equipment, allowing residents to immediately utilize the valuable mulch. “Our goal is to recycle all green waste on site and return it to the soil where it belongs,” he said.

Enriching the soil to ensure trees and other plants are thriving requires restoring the soil’s biology with organic treatments. For instance, Thibodeaux treats his customers’ roses with an organic fungicide made from whole ground corn meal. A blend of fish oil and Louisiana molasses has been successful as a fertilizer as well, he said.

 To manage unwanted weeds, Thibodeaux uses a vinegar solution. “Corporate chemical companies have conditioned us to use toxic chemicals in our landscapes,” he said. “These can be toxic to people, pets, and soil organisms.” In the long run, Thibodeaux insisted, plants are designed to grow naturally where they are sustained by healthy soils.

Chemical bug sprays also kill more than the intended target, Thibodeaux said. “They kill the good guys too.”

In addition to natural fertilizers, Thibodeaux sells “beneficial insects,” those that, when released, kill target pests.

For fire ants, he has seen great success with his company’s combination of orange oil and molasses.

The first action is to get the soil biologically active, Thibodeaux explained. Then keep it healthy by sustaining it through biological landscaping management.

 Bob’s Tree Preservation offers three vital services to achieve this: 1) Tree preservation, including pruning; 2) Thibodeaux manages the eighty-acre family tree farm in Church Point, where shade trees are grown, “live oak being our big thing,” Thibodeaux said. His father, Bob Thibodeaux, acquired acorns for years from historic sites and planted these live oaks. “We think we have the best genetics of all tree farms.”; 3) Thibodeaux’s brother Neal manages the composting facility, which recycles the gardening waste for mulch and ages the waste for compost.

The biological landscape management ties it all together, Thibodeaux said. Organic gardening and the practice of recycling garden waste to improve soil, popular in Europe for years, are taking off in South Louisiana, Thibodeaux said. “It’s something our grandfathers did, and as society became more urbanized, we lost our connection to the land. We’re restoring that connection.”

For information on Bob’s Tree Preservation, call 888-620-Tree (8733) or visit bobstree.com.