No till farming is simply the practice of planting the earth with the least disturbance. Keeping the soil structure intact is critically important because healthy soil is an amazingly complex community composed of many thousands of species of inter-related organisms. This “Soil Food Web” works in concert with plants in an ongoing trade of nutrient commodities – Plants synthesize and provide carbohydrates for the soil microbes and the little guys reciprocate by producing nitrogen compounds that plants need. It’s a beautiful system….. Until someone flips it upside down!

A rich garden soil takes many years to develop. At first, fungi and bacteria aggregate soil particles and create the texture and structure necessary for good moisture and air movement. Once this structure is in place, more organisms move in, which increases soil productivity. What drives soil productivity is something called “nutrient recycling” which is really just a “poop loop” generated by organisms eating plant stuff, each other or each other’s poop…… You don’t need to think about this when you pick your gorgeous veggies!

Envision the soil as a metropolis like New York City. At the lowest levels of the city, there are pipes, wires and cables all intertwined in a million miles of intelligent tangle that actually keeps the whole system running somewhat smoothly (the fungi). Then there are the layers of beings: They catch rides through tunnels, on the streets and even up and down through vertical tubes (the bacteria). Some beings stay low all the time while others get close to the sky because that’s where they make their living! All of the big moving parts of the city are totally dependent on the beings and the intelligent tangle (the protozoa, amoebae, nematodes, arthropods and worms). Flip this city upside down with a giant shovel, or worse, roto-till it, and the intricately organized system is destroyed and most of the life with it.

So, how do you garden without messing with the soil? Here are some simple practices:

• Fertilizing – Adding a food source for the soil microbes can improve the living energy and productivity of your soil. Natural granular fertilizers (manure, animal or feed based) can be applied to the soil surface prior to top-dressing with compost. It’s important to cover with compost. Late fall or early spring are the best times.

• Composting – Top dress with compost to add diversity to the Soil Food Web and provide food and habitat for larger organisms.

• Planting – This is the easiest part. Once you’ve determined the proper spacing for your specific varieties, simply plant your seeds or seedlings with the least amount of digging possible. Any soil you remove from a hole should be spread at the surface and it’s always a good idea to top dress again with compost in the disturbed area.

After several years of the no till approach with consistent composting your soil should be naturally loose and aerated enough to plant with your bare hands.

Pete Bottomley, AOLCP
Coast of Maine Organic Products

For years, I’ve told gardeners that chitin serves as a rich food source for soil microbes, which, in turn, provide the soil ecosystem and plants with essential building blocks for healthy growth. The soil depends on a food pyramid similar to our own with carbohydrates, protein, fats and fiber. In fact, the most common food sources in nature are cellulose, starch and chitin.

Chitin’s molecular formula is (C8H13NO5):

The chitin molecule is essentially a series of modified sugar molecules hitched together. As a food source, it packs a lot caloric energy. That’s why lobster, crab and shrimp shells compost really well. Crustacean shells are composed of a matrix of this chitin and calcium and magnesium bearing molecules. The claws have much higher concentrations of the hard stuff whereas flexible body parts are higher in softer chitin.

We know chitin plays a critical nutritional role to the Soil Food Web and that a healthy soil system recycles the bodies of chitin-rich insects. Clearly, poisoning all the insect life in your lawn and garden disrupts Nature’s beautiful design! A lawn or garden with no insects is missing a key food source.

I believe a healthy natural Soil Food Web keeps predators, prey, parasites and diseases in balance. My 40 year old natural lawn, with all those expired insect bodies, does not get grub damage, insect infestations or fungus diseases. Anecdotally, I have used lobster compost on several grub infested lawns and found it deters grubs. A little research unearthed the hypothesis that adding chitin to the soil surface promotes the proliferation of chitin eating bacteria….. There are specific bacteria for eating everything! And, behold, grubs’ jaws are made of chitin! It is possible that the bacteria leach into the soil and irritate the grubs so they leave or stop eating. I don’t know the mechanism exactly, but have seen it work.

In conclusion, shellfish compost is a great choice when you want to boost the vigor of the Soil Food Web in your lawn or garden. The calcium and magnesium are critical plant nutrients and we are still learning about all the miraculous benefits of chitin.

Pete Bottomley, AOLCP
Coast of Maine Organic Products

Using your enewsletter, Facebook page and or your Twitter account, offer the chance for your customers to post a picture of their gardening success when using a Coast of Maine soil. If they post on your Facebook page we will give them a free bag of soil. We will credit your account and have them come back to you store to pick it up.

If you don’t have a Facebook page you can have them post on the Coast of Maine Facebook Page
and we will take care of everything.

If you don’t have a Facebook page we would be happy to build one for you.

Coast of Maine has been making handcrafted compost blends since 1996 using marine residuals, like lobster shells, that are rich in calcium and chitin.

Many years ago Dr. William Albrecht, one of the foremost authorities on the relation of soil fertility to human health, wrote about calcium in one of his many volumes of research.

“Calcium perhaps plays more roles in the overall health of both the plant and the soil than any other nutrient. If we get the calcium right in the soil, most of our work is done.”

At Coast of Maine we know that once we hand craft our soils our work is not done. When you place your order with us we will work to help you market your garden center with our expertise in social media in a way that you won’t receive from any other vendor.

I’ll come to your garden center myself and host the “Great Coast of Maine” giveaway to bring customers to you and stimulate sales.

Give me a call today and I’ll explain how we market your garden center while providing you with outstanding handcrafted, organically approved compost blends.

At Coast of Maine we are constantly looking for ways to promote the independent garden centers who carry our products. Last year we started posting videos to the Facebook pages of those garden centers. You may have seen a few on your Facebook page.

The results have been wonderful. Views of our videos are way up and early sales of products like our Quoddy Lobster Compost are ahead of last year.

We have “liked” over 350 garden center Facebook pages on the Coast of Maine Facebook page. You may be able to learn from them to improve or build your own Facebook page.

We are also here to help you build or improve your Facebook page. We only ask that you “like” the Coast of Maine Facebook page once this is done.

In addition we will post video content to your Facebook page for the Coast of Maine products that you specifically sell while we invite your customers to view the videos and then go to your garden center to purchases those specific products.

We are building a broadcast network specifically developed to promote and market independent garden centers. I would like to invite you to view the Coast of Maine Facebook Page to see how we highlighted almost 50 garden centers last year.

In addition you may want to check out the Coast of Maine YouTube Channel . You will see that we have begun to produce videos for the garden centers that carry our products. We actually have a section of the YouTube channel set up to promote independent garden centers. We might be able to do this for your garden center too. Just ask us.

We love doing business with independent garden centers and we want to help you market your business.

I often encourage our garden centers to video tape their employees and customers. You will be amazed by what they will say and how those videos can be used to increase your relationship with your customers.

We have shot how-to videos, customer testimonials and employee testimonials. They really help to define your garden center.

Don’t be afraid to grab a camera and put your employees and customers on video. It is a great way to expand your brand.

If you need some help celebrating these moments just let us know!

Have a wonderful holiday!

At Coast of Maine we believe in doing much more than creating and distributing our hand crafted, organically approved compost blends.

We believe that it is your garden center’s brand that builds the Coast of Maine brand. Because of that we want to help you expand your brand.

We will help you with all your social media needs. We can even help you with video production.

I just finished editing a couple of videos for Ward’s Nursery & Garden Center in Great Barrington, Mass., Van Houten Garden’s in New City, NY and Sprague’s Nursery & Garden Center in Bangor, Maine. Go ahead and click on the links and let us know if we are helping them reinforce their brand.

We’d love to help you.

This is the simplest form of marketing that vendors can do to help you market your garden center. If they can’t fix this quickly or they don’t have a store finder you may want to look for a similar vendor who does.

At Coast of Maine we are constantly updating store locator. In today’s internet world we want our customers to know exactly where to purchase our products and just as importantly we want to help independent garden centers market themselves.

Coast of Maine Organic Products launched a new webpage and YouTube channel today “Celebrating Independent Garden Centers.”

“We’ve done something special to support the Independent Garden Centers who have helped us distribute our lobster compost and other organically approved soils to gardeners throughout the Northeast,” said Cameron Bonsey, Director of Marketing. “It is their belief in our products that has enabled Coast of Maine to grow substantially in the last fifteen years. With all the changes in competition and marketing resources over that time we have seen many of these businesses struggle to survive. We saw this as an opportunity to take our marketing knowledge and do something to help each garden center market itself.

“We have spent a tremendous amount of time and resources in helping garden centers build and manage their Facebook pages and YouTube channels as a way to help them compete with businesses that have much larger budgets. In a sense, when they purchase our soil we also become their Social Media agency free of charge.”

Coast of Maine Organic Products are approved for organic growers by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA). Their lobster based compost blends are distributed to independent retailers from Maine to North Carolina and west to Ohio.

“We have spent the last fifteen years providing hand crafted, high quality soils along with great customer service,” said Bonsey. “Now is the time for us to truly give something back. The reason customers come to independent garden centers is for knowledge and high quality, effective, unique products. Our videos, produced quickly and economically, convey the homespun uniqueness that makes each of these destinations worth visiting in person.”

For more information contact:
Cameron Bonsey
Director of Marketing
Coast of Maine Organic Products, Inc
145 NewburyStreet
Portland, Maine 04101
1-800-345-9315
cameronb@coastofmaine.com
www.coastofmaine.com