For organic gardening, N.J. company is a hardy perennial

MILLVILLE, N.J. - The Espoma Co., a leading producer of organic fertilizer, still uses largely the same natural soil-enriching ingredients it did when it was founded nearly 90 years ago.

What's different now is that organic gardening has moved from the obscure corners of garden centers into the mainstream, shifting Espoma into a comfortable position in a thriving niche of the lawn- and garden-supply industry.

"It used to be we had to downplay the organics when we were selling it because the organics always had some baggage with it - it smells, it doesn't work, it's too expensive," said Jeremy Brunner, 43, Espoma's vice president, who represents the fourth generation of family ownership.

More customers have acquired a nose for the funky fertilizer and have come to appreciate the value of the slow-release nutrients in natural plant food. Espoma's earthy products, once sold only in the Mid-Atlantic, are distributed nationwide now.

The company has built up its "Espoma Organic" brand in recent years to expand recognition beyond its signature product: Holly-tone, a popular food for acid-loving plants that public-radio gardening expert Mike McGrath believes introduced many consumers to natural fertilizer by stealth.

"A lot of people who use Holly-tone probably don't know it's organic," said McGrath, whose show, You Bet Your Garden, is underwritten by the company. "That's their biggest problem, establishing the Espoma name."

Espoma was founded in 1929 by Herbert G. Sanders, Brunner's great-grandfather, a salesman who saw a market for products that were safer and easier for gardeners to use than the agricultural fertilizers and pesticides that had revolutionized farming in the early 20th century.

The origins of Espoma's name are obscure - the owners tell a joke about an ancestor's infatuation with a flamenco dancer.

"It's just a brand," Brunner said. "It doesn't really mean anything."

Millville, in Cumberland County, was strategically located near the suppliers of ingredients that gardeners have long used to naturally fortify their soil: bonemeal and blood meal from Philadelphia's slaughterhouses, feathers and manure from Vineland's poultry farms, and crab shells from the Delaware Bay's seafood packers.

The company's sole product for its first two decades, "Espoma Organic," was mixed and bagged by workers with shovels. The smelly production of animal products - they must be dehydrated, pasteurized, and pelletized - was later outsourced to rendering plants.

"My grandfather said it was the happiest day of his life when he got out of the processing business," said Brunner. "It's not a fun business to be in."

Now, the granular materials arrive in Millville by truck and rail, where they are blended, along with ingredients such as cottonseed meal, alfalfa meal, sulfate of potash, and kelp, in an automated packaging plant that has only a faint barnyard aroma.

"We've had vendors come in and say it's cleaner here than a food-production facility," Brunner said.

Since September, Espoma's 35 employees have been cranking up production for the gardening season, which begins officially in this region with Saturday's opening of the Philadelphia Flower Show.

Spring is like Christmas for garden retailers: The whole year's results will be determined in the next few months.

With the growth of the organics market, even the industry's dominant player, Scotts Miracle-Gro Co., has awakened to natural products.

Scotts reported about $3 billion in annual sales last year, including about $35 million in revenue from organic products.

Espoma, a closely held company that does not disclose its sales data, says it is battling larger and smaller rivals alike.

"Scotts Miracle-Gro is trying to get in it, but they lack authenticity," Brunner said. "Then you've got the little competitors, who are trying to come at us but don't have the resources and the economies of scale that we do."

The company has evolved, expanding product lines and reformulating its best sellers to reinforce its organic pedigree.

Espoma launched a lawn-care line four years ago to capitalize on homeowners' unease about children and pets coming into contact with chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

It markets Espoma soil mixes, prepared by a supplier, and introduced a line of animal bedding developed by Brunner's sister, Jaime, an equestrian.

This year, Espoma is testing a new line of liquid organic fertilizers, aimed at millennials who are dabbling with houseplants and container gardens.

Five years ago, it installed a rooftop solar system that provides all the power for the Millville complex, giving Espoma a clean-energy credential that it trumpets on its packages.

Its most popular granular fertilizers are now carried in big-box stores. But its primary outlets are family-run garden centers.

"They're a really reputable supplier," said David Green, owner of Primex Garden Center in Glenside, whose family has sold Espoma products for more than 60 years. "They look out for their dealers."

Primex carries Espoma's full line, but Green said Holly-tone alone accounts for 20 percent of sales. The product, invented in 1949 and aimed at growers of such acid-loving plants as azaleas and rhododendrons, inspired an extended family of products. There are now about a dozen, including Plant-tone, Bio-tone, and Rose-tone.

For many years, the major Espoma products contained some agricultural chemicals and were labeled "rich in organics." Serge Brunner, 67, Espoma's president and Jeremy's father, said the company never professed zealotry about organic gardening.

"We have not embraced the movement as a religious movement," he said. "We think organics, especially for the homeowner, provide a lot of benefits in terms of response and safety."

As the organic movement developed, purists complained that Espoma products were insufficiently organic, a sore subject for the pioneers of natural fertilizer.

"We saw that companies were claiming they were more organic than us, when we were organic before they even knew how to spell the word," said Serge Brunner, whose mother was Sanders' daughter. He said Jeremy suggested they reformulate the major lines of the last decade and purge the agricultural chemicals.

To compensate for the loss of the quick-response synthetics, Espoma added more microbes, which accelerate the breakdown of the natural materials, speeding the rate at which nutrients become available to plants.

In a mature industry undergoing consolidation, the Brunners continually confront a question many closely held companies face: whether to build for future generations or sell.

There isn't much debate. The Brunners have seen what happened to other businesses absorbed by competitors.

"Everything that's special about the company gets wiped out," said Jeremy Brunner, who has two teenage children, the fifth generation.

The company is conservatively run. The office decor is dated, and the executives apologize for the hodgepodge layout of the factory, assembled from 10 adjoining buildings as the business expanded.

But the production line is modern, with four robots to handle ever greater volumes of packages. (No jobs were lost to automation, they quickly add.)

Espoma's investments, such as organic fertilizer, are designed for long-term results rather than immediate gratification. "We have a craftsmanlike mentality," said Serge Brunner.

"One of our secrets is you respect the legacy," he said. "We've had now three generations who've devoted their lives to building a successful company and seeing it go on. It would take a lot of guts to say: 'You know what? Screw that, the equity's here, I'm going to take that and walk away.' "

amaykuth@phillynews.com

215-854-2947@maykuth

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Boosting organic soil fertility has limitations

Does the origin of your bat guano matter?

Within organic-gardening circles, there is an ongoing debate over the provenance of various ingredients to enhance soil fertility. For stalwarts, even some items certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program are out of bounds.

Take rock phosphate, which the NOP allows to be used in organic farming. As with several organic soil amendments, rock phosphate is strip-mined. Its extraction is linked to the release of radioactive materials, which has raised health concerns.

"It's hard for me personally to reconcile rock phosphate with organic farming," said Jeff Gillman, director of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Botanical Gardens and the author of The Truth About Organic Gardening.

Anything mined, of course, is a finite resource, so technically it's not sustainable. Greensand, a mineral called glauconite mined until last year in New Jersey, is a common source of potassium in organic fertilizers, including some products offered by the Espoma Co.

"I'm not wild about it," said Gillman.

And then, there's bat guano, which is definitely organic. But collection of the feces, a concentrated source of nitrogen and phosphorous, can be destructive to bats' cave habitats.

"Bat guano is huge," said Gillman. "It can be renewably harvested in the United States. But in Indonesia and Jamaica, the caves are almost completely destroyed."

Espoma says its guano is harvested from wild, insect-eating U.S. bats.

Some gardeners consider inorganic ingredients undesirable. But the NOP's National Organic Standards Board has actually approved some synthetic components.

For instance, elemental sulfur is synthetic, but the NOP has approved its use as an organic additive. Espoma's flagship product, Holly-tone, relies on elemental sulfur to increase soil acidity.

For more information, go to www.philly.com/organic.

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In 2013, Espoma launched a line of lawn-care fertilizers that was clearly an attempt to poke at the market leader, Scotts Miracle-Gro. Scotts had introduced a plant food for Holly growers, taking on Espoma's marquee product, Holly-Tone. Espoma produced a video for its new lawn food, modeled after the famed 1984 Apple commercial for the Macintosh launch, that was one of its more adventurous marketing efforts. The video was shown mostly at trade events.

"We wanted to make a statement," said Jeremy Brunner, Espoma's vice president. "They had come after us hard already. We figured, we already poked the giant bear, what's to lose by trying to play off the 1984 Apple commercial. I was hoping it would go a little more viral than it did."

See the video here.