"Did I say “I guess I’m just not cut out to grow vegetables?”. Are you kidding!"

-Kevin

Learn the Lessons of the Manure Connoisseur

© 2003-2005 By Kevin Wirth - all rights reserved worldwide

Word Count: 2870

First written in November, 2003

Updated 11/28/05

Photo © 2003 by Larisa Wirth

This article talks about some of the challenges I have overcome as an organic gardener, and offers insight into how the same challenges translate directly into my online marketing efforts.

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My wife and I live in Port Orchard, WA atop a little knoll next to a year-round creek that overlooks a beautiful view of decent sized Maples, Firs, Cedars, and Alder. Basically, we’re surrounded by a forest. We’re talking gorgeous trees that are 75 – 100 feet tall. Most people would not even give a second thought to how well something grows here. It’s just obvious. Well, right after Larisa and I moved in, I was so excited about planting our first veggie garden I could hardly stand it. We moved in during the month of August, so that meant I had to wait until the following spring before I could start planting (in the cooler northerly climates, August is too late to start a garden).

I could hardly stand it.

It was like telling a kid in a candy store “We’re all sold out - you have to wait another year while we make some more”.

So, I decided to make the most of it by putting my energy into planning for the next year. I was so psyched – I ordered more seeds from garden catalogs that winter than I can recall. I planned the garden to the “T”. I re-read all my gardening books, and bought a couple more. I even drew up a plan for my garden plot, which is rather sizeable (about 50' x 40'). I even put up a fence to keep the deer out. Then I invested in a rototiller to churn up the hard dirt that obviously had not ever been turned over at any time in the last 200 years. And finally Larisa and I created some large planter beds for strawberries and other goodies.

When spring finally came, I think I must have planted around 300 corn plants, a huge row of beans, tomatoes all over the place and tons of other stuff. We watered, weeded, and tended our garden that summer with the full expectation of spectacular results. I even added some bee hives to ensure pollination (not to mention the honey!).

But the result of all that effort was far less than what I expected.

The biggest corn plants (maybe 5 of them) only grew to 4 feet – most of them barely reached 24 inches. It looked like I was in the pygmy corn business. And although the tomatoes grew fairly well, they caught the blight just as they were reaching maturity and turned black within 2 weeks. Out of 25 tomato plants, I think maybe 10 tomatoes managed to reach orange before they turned black. There wasn’t a thing I could do to save our crop of probably 400 tomatoes. What was looking to be a very handsome harvest of turned out to be a huge bust in many respects. Stringbeans and strawberries did OK, and so did the cucumbers. But that's about it. Everything else was a huge dud. Even the zucchini – you know, the plant you can never seem to turn off in the summer? – was begrudgingly kicking out maybe one small vegetable every other week.

I think I got 4 ears of corn that summer for all my hard work. I felt like a total failure - something I had never experienced in all my years of gardening. I couldn't explain it at first, but as I began to investigate, I slowly began to learn what I had taken for granted everywhere else I had ever planted a garden.

What I learned was the dirt at our new home was hard pan, glacier scoured clay, and it couldn’t grow a turnip. It’s that bad. It’s just about the most worthless dirt you could ever ask for, and has very few of the nutrients most veggies really like.

So what’s a would-be organic farmer to do?

I was SO disappointed at how that garden turned out. But then I noticed that other folks in my neighborhood did not seem to be having the same problems I had. What? How could that be? Their veggie gardens looked absolutely WONderful! So what did I do?

Did I say “I guess I’m just not cut out to grow vegetables?”. Are you kidding! I went over and asked my neighbors what their secret was. “No big secret, Kevin – just go to the end of the road and talk to Christy”. So, I did. Christy and her husband Scott had a few horses on their acreage. When I asked her what the big secret to growing a great veggie garden was, she laughed. “You see that big pile of horse manure?” she said pointing to a huge mountain of it. “Please, take all you want!”

I immediately got it. Duh. Manure. Of course.

So I loaded up my trailer that fall with about 10 loads of manure and piled it in every row of my garden. Over the winter it settled into a nice mixture of rich compost. It was a bit of work, and the smell was nasty for the first week, but it was gone after that. Pretty much a no-brainer.

The next spring I planted a new garden, and when harvest time came around my corn was 8-9 feet tall (and, it was REALLY good, too - see the photo above with my first ear of corn). In fact, everything in my garden did a whole lot better because of all the manure I had piled on. I was finally feeling pretty good about my garden – and then I suffered what at first appeared to be another setback.

My supplier moved away.

Scott and Christy sold their house and moved far away before I could get more manure for the following year. My first thought was “oh no!”. But then I regained my composure. Was I going to let that stop me? No way. I’m fortunate enough to live in a region where there are lots of horses. Which means that many people have TONS of horse manure that most of them are usually just too happy to have me take away for them - for free.

So, I found another source of manure. It was a small mountain (18’ tall – 20’ in circumference) but it was composed of 80% wood chips and only 20% manure. Christy’s manure was about the opposite ratio. I loaded up on it anyway. This past year when I put it in my garden, I wondered what my yield would be. I found out – not as good as the 80% manure mix. But I still got a decent garden out of it. So, this fall, guess what I’ll be doing? Looking for another source (actually, I think I found one).

After Scott and Christy moved, guess what? All my other neighbors had the same problem I did - no horse manure. So, when some of them saw me shoveling new manure into my garden, they asked where I go it. Pretty soon, I was engaged in some serious JV manure efforts with my neighbors!

Just the other day I was helping another neighbor of mine shovel some manure into his truck (I had turned him on to my new source), when I started laughing. He stopped shoveling long enough to give me a ‘what’s up’ look and asked why.

“Because”, I said, “never in my life did I imagine that I would become a manure connoisseur”. I was laughing because I had determined that an 80/20 mix wasn't strong enough for my gardening needs. It just seemed way too funny that I was actually assessing the manure content of this huge pile of manure.

But I had discovered that being a manure connoisseur made all the difference in creating a higher yield for my vegetable garden. I knew that other folks faced different challenges with their gardens, but my situation demanded that I amend my soil considerably with just the right mix if I wanted to grow a productive garden. And though there were a lot of other ways to amend my soil, piling on the horse manure was the quickest and most effective solution.

There are some definite comparisons between prepping my garden and working online.

Many people try their hand at making a go of it online, but then give up because of one reason or another. Something doesn't work, they run into challenges they can't solve on their own, or they just don't get it, and they give up.

I know that the approach I took with my garden reflects my approach to nearly everything I do in life, including the way I seek online profits. The principles are the same for me, and they’ll work for you too, if you apply them. It doesn’t matter what it is you want to do, if you just use these principles, you will probably succeedl.

Set a goal . For my garden, I wanted to grow enough corn to keep me happy all winter. And I wanted to grow enough tomatoes to make my own tomato sauce for spaghetti and gazpacho soup in the summer, and dried tomatoes for winter soups. For my online business, I wanted to create enough income to replace my regular job, so I could keep on working from home and grow my own internet business. Once I achieved that goal, I began to implement other goals. The key is to HAVE goals, and then work to achieve them. Just having the goals helps to propel you towards meeting them.

I have noticed something very peculiar about goals. I write them down once, print them out, and post them in my office. The goals actually document what I say I want my success to look like. And, I don't look at them every single day. In fact, some goals seem to get lost in the shuffle of competing priorities. But I've noticed that when I do finally go back and take a look at all of my goals, I often notice that I achieved many of the ones that were not even formost in my mind. Or so I thought. Funny thing is - they really were at the front of my mind all along, even when I didn't notice.

Imagine that. So - now I leverage that. For example...

I had a little yellow sticky pasted on the top/center of my monitor that said "$1,000/week", but then I changed it to $1,000/day". That's my new goal, and I know I can achieve it. That little note hits my frame of reference every day, and I know my brain in working on ways to make it happen even when I'm not consciously thinking about it.

Having a plan doesn't always ensure your success. I had a FANtastic garden plan, or so I thought. And I had every reason to think I would be successful because that same plan worked before in other gardens. I got all those catalogs and discovered what would or ‘might’ grow in my region. I learned about crop rotation, pests, and soil conditions. I mapped out where I would grow certain veggies in my garden plot. By the time spring rolled around, I was more than ready to execute my plan. But the plan wasn't adequate because I made the mistaken assumption that I did not need to amend my soil. Everything else was right, but not that. Which means that my plan wasn't effective for where I lived.

When I started my online business, I spent a LOT of time just doing some basic research, reading up on what others said works and what does not. My biggest problem was trying to figure out what niche I wanted to focus on, and what unique twists I wanted to create. That’s tough for me, because I am interested in SO MANY things. I then spent a solid year doing nothing but research my niche, collect information, and basically educate myself about it. I was slower than a slug. I learned all I could, investigated a ton of different approaches, and then distilled it all back down into a strategy I thought would work. I wrote that plan and strategy down. I still do that, and I refine it all the time as I continue to learn.

When your initial efforts don’t work, don’t give up. Be prepared to experience setbacks when you execute your plan. When I planted my first garden at our new home, I expected great things, but it was pretty much a dismal failure in my opinion. I could have given up at that point, but I was determined to have a productive veggie garden. That’s the key to realizing any dream. Don’t give up. Then ask others who are successful what they do to overcome similar challenges. My motto is, when I run into a hurdle, there is ALWAYS a way around it, under it, over it, or through it. I've learned to never let a hurdle stop me if I really want to achieve something. I just have to discover how to get past whatever is in my way, and never give up until I figure out at least one solution that works. And the funny thing is, once you discover one solution, several others soon pop up. And I usually keep looking for the best one. The ‘best’ solution may not be the easiest, or even the most pleasant, but it must one that has proven it will help me to achieve my goal If I’m really serious, I won’t let a little unpleasant hard work stop me. I found that for me to create a successful garden, I had to become a manure connoisseur. Hey – whatever it takes. Fortunately, I don’t have to shovel horse manure to be successful online!

Nurture it. I took great pains to ensure that I watered my garden sufficiently so that everything I planted would grow. I also took out tons of weeds that were competing for the water and compost I had painstakingly brought into my garden. The evidence of my success was several ears of corn. The same holds true with your online business. You have to learn what it takes to create a winning web site - from meta tags to headlines, sales copy and keywords. You have to test your results and analyze how and where to make adjustments. Success requires that you nuture and tweak your online efforts until you achieve your goal.

Protect your investment. You know, when you have a great garden growing, people can sometimes get jealous. They might even try to sneak in and walk off with some of your produce. Then there are wild animals, like deer and bugs. They love corn, strawberries, and lots of other veggies. I had to build a fence to keep them out. In the online world, there are hijackers and hackers that like to take advantage of your hard work. You need to investigate and make sure no one is using your hard work to siphon off your profits. Make sure you do regular backups of your hard drive, and protect it with solid anti-virus and other tools.

Ensure pollination. To ensure that my garden flourishes, I also keep some honeybees on hand. Not only do they keep the veggies growing, but I get a honey bonus as well. I had to do some research, because it’s not easy to keep honeybees, especially if you’re an organic gardener. Most beekeepers today use an insecticide to control mites that plague honeybees – but I refuse to do that. I can’t stand the thought of having any of my products contaminated with pesticides. In my marketing efforts, I have found that it’s actually very tempting to use tactics that will make me money, but are not really ethical. I find that I stick with my ethics and let the chips fall where they may, because I can sleep better at night. In marketing, I have found that the best way to make sure I get results is to use a viral approach. Viral marketing by giving away info products extends my presence effortlessly, and ensures that I reach many more people than I would have otherwise.

Be prepared to adapt. I thought everything was finally going my way when I starting importing tons of horse manure into my garden. Until my source dried up. This meant I had to move quickly to find a new source. This is often the case in any business venture – someone you rely on for something suddenly goes away for one reason or another. If you want to stay in business, you just have to find another way to get that resource. Like I'm fond of saying, "it always pays to have a plan B".

Refine your efforts. I found out what grew in my garden without any manure: string beans and raspberries. But if I wanted to successfully grow other things, I had to find a way to make it work. I found one product that worked really well - horse manure. When I lost my first source, I had to find another one. The first two sources I found were not pure horse manure, and they did not produce the same results in my garden. So I learned the very important lesson that I needed a mixture that was at least 80% pure horse manure to give me the results I wanted.

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Kevin Wirth is the owner of KEVS-KORNER ezine, a free online newsletter offering articles, tips, resources, and insight on over 150 different marketing tactics. He is bringing together a growing community where you can work with others to create and market products online. To discover how Kevin can help you grow your online business, and get a free gift just for visiting, please head on over to www.kevs-korner.com.

This article was first published on KEVS-KORNER February 25, 2005.

Kevin and 'Sailor'

Kevin Wirth is the editor of KEVS-KORNER ezine and publisher of several reports and articles on many diverse topics such as Customer Loyalty, Internet Marking Tactics, and Seafood. A 25 year veteran of Corporate America, Kevin consults with netpreneurs and small businesses to help them attract and retain customers and design, build, and market digital products. He is also an expert on Team Dynamics, Project Management, Process Management, Risk Engineering, and Information Management. For a free sampler of his articles, reports and to sign up for a free subscription to KEVS KORNER ezine, be sure to visit Kevin's home page at:

http://www.kevs-korner.com.

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