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The end of the last summer holidays saw me harvesting about half a ton of runner beans (for the 50th time that summer), more courgettes than Iknew what to do with (they grew when my back was turned), dwarf beans, the last of my lettuces and the first of my Bramley apples.  

 

My husband has his annual foray up into the apple tree to pick the bulk of the Bramleys: our tree normally yields about 100 - 150lbs so if you live close enough to me and would like some at the end of August, all you have to do is come and collect!  

 

The elderberries follow suit, closely followed by the grapes.  These two are always a race between us and the starlings.  (Last year the birds got there first!)

 

All of this produce ends up in the freezer, chutneys, jams, jellies as well as mincemeat for Christmas and finally the Christmas pudding.  The pud is normally the last thing I make at the end of September, before collapsing in a little heap swearing that I never want to see another apple ever again!

 

The resulting chutneys, jams and jellies see us and our family through for at least a year, normally longer.  The last time I bought chutney was, I suspect, over two decades ago!

 

With the exception of our very old apple tree, and the grape vine and elderflower tree, everything else has been grown by me...with a fair dose of luck and help from Mother Nature. Each spring I spend a fair few hours digging over the veggie patch getting rid of a multitude of weed roots (I can now spot a bindweed root at a thousand paces) as well as digging in the good 'organic' stuff.  

 

And for a few weeks our windowsills were full of seeds planted in all varieties of pots (old milk cartons make excellent pots for planting seeds in!).  Everything was planted from seed and nurtured from the minute they popped out as baby seedlings from the compost, through their grumpy toddler seed days to when they became lanky teenagers desperate for some more space and freedom.  

 

When I planted them out in the garden, they all looked a tad scared about life, and I lay awake at night worrying in case the slugs got them.  But finally they all find their way in life and suddenly they all start to bear fruit.

 

Now, I'm no gardening expert,  and it's all very hard work and a real steep learning curve.  There have been major disappointments - like the time I lost all 24 tomato plants to blight (not great as I was planning on them for chutney); and a few lessons learned - for instance, do not plant more than 2 or 3 courgette plants (I planted 9) because I ended up with more courgettes than we (and my family and friends) could physically eat.  (Courgette cake anyone?)

 

But on the whole, it works out OK - and the day I cooked a courgette omelette for lunch was a day of celebration: courgettes picked 5 mins before cooking and eggs laid over the previous couple of days by the newest members of the O'Rourke household, the rescue battery chickens. It was the best omelette I've ever had, I can tell you!

 

And you know what - just in case you though I'd lost the plot, and you thought you were in fact reading an article in Gardener's World - this gardening lark is just like marketing.

 

I'm often asked if I can guarantee quick and instant results with marketing.  Well, not really.  Yes there are things you can do for quick returns, but generally speaking you have to plan what you're going to do, and take time to plant the seeds and nurture them until they bear you fruit.  

 

Along the way, you have to water and feed your marketing seeds and make sure they have the right conditions to prosper (right message in the right medium to the right target market, at the right time).  And when you do see results - you have to do something with those results so that you're guaranteed ongoing success.  Just like turning fruit into chutneys and jams, the results of your marketing should give you information that you can use and will see you right through into the future.

 

Failures don't mean your marketing is failing and you should give it all up: it just means that you shouldn't do that again.  In the corporate marketing world, I can assure you that there are plenty of "failures"...plenty of promotional activities that just didn't work.  That's normal.  The question you should ask is "that's interesting - why didn't that work?"..and know what to do differently next time.

 

When I worked at a very well known large financial company, we used to send direct mail campaigns out every 6 weeks or so.  Success was deemed to be a 2 - 5% response rate...what we didn't see was a 95 - 98% failure rate.  Just be aware that these kinds of percentage results are fairly typical in marketing, so you need to ensure that your activities reach lots of people.  One bit of marketing activity to a few people just won't work for you, and won't bear you any fruit.

 

So do take a few moments out to think about the planning of your marketing for the seasons ahead, and make sure that you set aside time over the next few weeks to plant your marketing seeds and look after them so that your marketing bears you the fruits of success for many years to come.

 

 

"My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view."

H. Fred Ale

 

A Marketing Message from a Runner Bean (or Two)....