This year, the Palos Verdes based Kellogg Garden Products company, a family-run fertilizer producer, turns 90 years old. And while the company is steeped in a rich history, it was also a trendsetter.
“We were organic so much before it was cool–since 1925,” said Kathy Johnson, 51, director of sustainability for Kellogg and granddaughter of the founder.
Johnson’s grandfather, H. Clay “Chub” Kellogg, was working as a surveyor in the early 1920s when he stumbled upon a unique product.
“He was surveying the Santa Ana river bottom and saw that there was plush growth along the river bed,” said Janice Kellogg, 82, Kathy’s mother and Chub’s daughter-in-law. “He took some home in a shoebox and tried it on his orange trees.”
The belief at the time was that once a tree had gone foul, it could never be revived.
“Horticulturists back then thought farming was like mining,” Kellogg said. “Once one area was done, they’d move on to the next spot.”
When Chub saw how the river bed soil revived his orange trees, he knew he had found a remarkable new product and that organic matter could restore soil. He began buying up orange groves that had gone foul.
After World War II, Kellogg’s late husband, H. Clay “Hi” Kellogg, joined his father’s business and helped start packaging the product. They sold their soil in 100-pound paper sacks. Sears Roebuck was the first major retailer to sell it.
“The folks at Sears told my dad that he couldn’t possibly have enough soil to keep their stores stocked,” Johnson said. “So he took them down to the plant in Carson and showed them the massive heap. They were convinced.”
Kellogg Garden Products’ fertilizers were ahead of their time yet not every nursery jumped at the opportunity to sell them.
“We were shamed out of the nursery for a while,” Johnson said. “We had this stinky, wet, heavy stuff. Chemicals had been a way of gardening for a long time and people were used to white powder, not organic stuff.”
Every Kellogg product is double certified organic, a hard label to achieve in California.
“The state of California has really rigorous standards,” said Johnson. “It’s a constant process. They inspect everything from the back of the cow to the product on the shelf. Every single plant has to be open to inspection 24/7.”
Kathy learned the importance of soil when her father taught her to garden as a child.
“I’d always ask him ‘Why are you putting dirt on dirt?’” she said. “It’s taken the better of 40 years for me to get it. You always want to put a large amount of organic material on soil. It’s alive and needs to eat organic matter.”
Kellogg Garden Products are now sold from Canada to Mexico and Texas to Hawaii and employees 350 people. Johnson’s brother, H. Clay “Hap” Kellogg, is Chief Executive Officer for the company and their mother is Chairman of the Board.
Janice Kellogg, or “Mrs. K” as the employees call her, is still very active in the company. She goes to the office at least twice a week and writes every check. She is known to write personal notes to her employees thanking them for their work. She is also a great ear for them.
“My husband was very type A,” she said. “He was a compulsive talker. I spent 25 years looking up and listening. After he died I thought, ‘My goodness, I have to learn to talk.’ God gave us two ears and one mouth. I’m better at listening.”
The company will certainly stay in the Kellogg family when it comes time to choose a next-generation successor. But it’s not clear yet who will take the reins.
Johnson’s son Connor is a likely candidate. He is studying neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University but took time off to travel to Africa. The Johnsons have been active in the Christian non-profit Planting with Purpose which teaches local populations to grow their own food. Last year she traveled to Rwanda with her son. He decided to stay.
“Connor walked from Rwanda to Uganda,” she said. “He was walking lost with nowhere to go when we heard singing in English. It was revival music that he knew and he took it as a sign. Now he lives with street orphans there. It’s incredible–he sleeps on a concrete floor.”
Johnson’s daughter, Kyra, is following a different path. A senior in high school, she became heavily involved in the theater community in Palos Verdes. She’s now auditioning for theater departments at colleges all over the country.
Kendall Johnson is an environmental studies major at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. She shares her mother’s passion for sustainability.
Whoever takes over the family business will be sure to continue its mission: to help people grow beautiful and healthy gardens, organically. Johnson believes this year will be an exciting one for the soil conversation. The United Nations declared 2015 the International Year of Soils.
“Franklin Roosevelt said, ‘A nation that destroys its soil destroys itself,’” Johnson said. “I think people are learning more and more how true that is.”
