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Quitters Never Win. Winners Never Quit.

June 2007

Quitters never win. Winners never quit.
Only quitters fail.
Stay committed to nature and you will prevail.

Here we are at the halfway point of 2007. We’re coming out of two years of about the worst climatic statistics in the past 50 years. When you combine below average rainfall with above average temperatures, maintaining a healthy landscape is a challenge. I’m 100% certain that those who have stayed committed to organics have met that challenge.

When I committed to organics 11 years ago, it was in part for health reasons. It’s not healthy for homeowners to be exposed to chemical fertilizers, weed killers and pesticides at their own homes. So, what was it doing to me and my employees as we treated hundreds of properties? Once that dawned on me, I switched to organics cold turkey. On the good side, I really started to feel better. On the bad side, I lost about a third of my landscape maintenance customers.

But, business has definitely been on the upswing ever since. Recently Darla Miles from Channel 8 News showed up at our Garden Center unexpectedly. She intended to do a story about how the drought and water restrictions are hurting the independent garden centers and the landscape business. I guess she thought she’d find us sitting on our hands. Surprise! The parking lot was full, the store was crowded and there were more than a dozen people stacked up at the register.

I do the radio stuff, but since this was TV, we opted to have Darla talk to the pretty one, my wife Mona. I think Mona convinced her that she needed to change her story to how being organic really protects you during a drought. If you use more native plants and organic fertilizers you can get by with about 40 percent less water.

Last year we had our highest annual sales ever and this year we’re on track to hit a new high. Our customers are loyal because they’ve learned that being organic pays off under normal conditions and makes an even bigger difference during a drought. Their neighbors have got to be asking, “Hey, how come your yard looks so much better than mine?”

This year everybody has weed problems. With all that heat and no water, we’ve burned the carbon out of our soil. But the last thing you want to do is to use a chemical weed killer. If you spray that all over your yard you’ll kill whatever beneficial life that’s left in the soil and mess up the balance. The better course it to fertilize and rebuild the carbon and the life in the soil. People who stick with organics - who don’t quit, are setting the pace for their neighborhoods and their communities. They’re going to be the ones that change this industry.

It’s true that there is a front end price to pay to switch to organics. At the front end, we lost a third of our customers, but we stayed committed. We didn’t quit. In retrospect, it was their loss. The homeowner who switches has some extra work and extra cost on the front end. Yes, aerating and applying compost to the average size lot takes some time and money. But, trust me, it pays for itself over time in savings on water alone. And the benefits compound over time. Question: And what price do you place on your family’s health?

We go to great lengths at the Garden Center to give our customers a head start on a successful conversion to organics. Plants arrive in a planting medium, not natural soil. There are no beneficial microbes or earthworms in those pots to digest our natural feedings. So, we repot them in the right kind of natural healthy soil - an acidic medium for plants that need an acid base, expanded shale and decomposing granite for cactus and so on.

Many trees are planted too deep. That’s usually at the level of the soil in the nursery pot. And, the bigger the tree was when you bought it, the worse the problem is. Growers repot trees several times time adding soil on top of the root ball each time. If a tree sticks straight into the soil like a telephone pole it’s planted to deep. That’s bad because, unlike root bark, trunk bark is damaged by the moisture in the soil. You should see a root flare above the soil. We repot trees at the proper level.

Yes, this is a costly time consuming process. But, when that person takes that plant home and it thrives, it sends a message. I can’t charge enough to do it, but I do it because it needs to be done. That’s our mission.

Never quit. Stay committed to nature. Seek out better ways. You will win in the long run. Winners never quit!