Ky Springtime: Ripe for Growing

BAD gardening joke. Very bad. This weekend I spent the entire daylight hours basking in the warmth of the KY springtime and planting my new raised flower bed with colorful perennials. The result of ice storms recently is that my garden is graced with some unexpected sunshine, so I had a raised bed added to my yard so I could have some plants that thrived in sun and not shade. The joke is that the soil (supposedly top soil for which I paid a premium) is really clay-hard blue clay the likes of which one makes bricks or vessels, but not likely to grow anything at all. If I had had a potter’s wheel I could have been creative in the garden.

So, I dug holes and used potting soil hoping that at least the newly planted plants could thrive and that I am set out to change the composition of this hard blue clay.  As I was sweating and toiling to try and fix this problem I realized that, not unlike marketing, without a good foundation (targets, messaging, differentiating factors), the basis of a solid strategic marketing plan, like a good garden spot, without the foundation, it is hard to grow and prosper. And both for the garden and the business, if you have a lousy base, then it is hard to get the growth that is expected, long term. You can do quick fixes, but, unless you really look at the base cause, the foundation, you can create fixes, but not long term solutions.

Hopefully, with one hole at a time replacing clay with potting soil and sand and peat moss, the clay will succumb to acting like soil and not clay. For marketing, taking one hole at a time and fixing it will also work, but not as well as starting with a good foundation and building upon that.