by Melinda Myers

No matter where you garden there never seems to be enough time to grow and enjoy all your favorite vegetables. Start preparing now to extend your growing season and continue enjoying garden fresh vegetables even after the first frost.

Some vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale and Brussels sprouts tolerate frost and even taste better after a slight chill. Most of these can tolerate temperatures as low as 24 to 28 ˚F.

Leeks are another vegetable that thrives in cooler temperature. Many tolerate temperatures as low as 20˚ F. Just mound some protective mulch around the plants and continue harvesting.

Take advantage of the chilly winter temperatures to store some of your carrots, turnips and parsnips in the ground for winter. Just cover the soil with straw or evergreen boughs after it lightly freezes. Dig as needed or during a winter thaw. You will enjoy their wonderfully sweet flavor.

Floating row covers protect plants from frost while allowing light, air and water through. (photo courtesy of MelindaMyers.com)

Those first few fall frosts are often followed by a week or more of mild temperatures. Protecting frost sensitive plants from the first few fall frosts is one way of extending your season. Cover the plants with old bed sheets, mattress pads, or similar items in late afternoon and remove them as soon as the temperatures climb above freezing. Keep these handy and be ready to cover whenever frost is in the forecast.

Make it easier by using floating row covers. The spun material allows air, light and water through while protecting the plants from frost. You will find different weights of row covers that provide different levels of temperature protection. Just loosely cover the plants and anchor the edges with stones, boards or garden pins. You only need to remove the fabric to harvest ripe vegetables. Otherwise, it can stay in place until the vegetables stop producing or you decide it is time to end the season.

Create a high tunnel over garden beds filled with large plants. Use hoops and row cover to allow easy access for harvesting while protecting the plants.

Cloches have long been used to jump start the season or extend it beyond the first fall frost. You’ll find a variety of shapes and sizes available. Select one large enough to cover your plants and protect them as needed. Look for those with vents to prevent plants from overheating and those that allow water through while trapping in the heat.

Don’t let unripe tomatoes go to waste if you are unable or unwilling to protect them from frost. Harvest any that are starting to show color before the killing frost and finish ripening them indoors. The bottom of the tomato should be greenish white or starting to color up. Store your green tomatoes in a cool (60 to 65 degrees) location to extend their storage life.

Spread out the tomatoes on heavy paper or wrap them individually in newspaper so the fruit do not touch each other. They’ll ripen over the next few weeks. Speed up the process by moving a few tomatoes to a warm bright location a few days before they’re needed. Enjoy green tomatoes fried, in relish, salsa, pies or many other ways.

And when your season ends, begin planning for next year. Enlist some of these strategies to jump start the season for an earlier harvest.

Melinda Myers has written over 20 gardening books, including Midwest Gardener’s Handbook, 2nd Edition and Small Space Gardening. She hosts The Great Courses “How to Grow Anything” instant video and DVD series and the nationally syndicated Melinda’s Garden Moment radio program. Myers is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine. Myers’ website is www.MelindaMyers.com.

by Dan Beaulieu
Business consultant

Having happy and satisfied customers is the most rewarding aspect of owning a business. If you concentrate on your customers and focus on delighting them you will never run out of business. You can have all the sales you want, all the price gouging, all of the promotions and advertising and, yes, they will all work to a certain extent but the number one thing that will make your company grow and thrive is having a following of delighted customers.

But of course, that is easier said than done. Delighting your customers takes focus, knowledge and concentration, and most of all it takes looking at your company experience from the customer’s point of view. That’s right, to delight your customer you have to walk in his shoes. That means be aware of and enhancing the customer experience.

The best way to do this is to look at every aspect of your business through your customers’ eyes. Look at every aspect of the business experience that your customers see and evaluate it from that point of view.

• How do customers find you? If you’re advertising, what do your ads look like. Evaluate other means of customer acquisition from flyers, to your website, to your social media. How does it look to the customers?
• What happens when they try to reach you? Is it by phone? Does somebody answer the phone immediately and deal with the customer professionally? Or if it’s voice mail, is your message professional? And most importantly with voice mail, do you get back to them quickly? Calling your own company and seeing for yourself how the phone is answered or how the message sounds, could be a real eye opener.
• How does the company present to the customers? Signage, trucks, equipment? If you are in retail, how does you place of business look to the customer?
• If you are a contractor, say a builder, or a roofer, or a landscaper, what is your quote process like? Is it easy and friendly along with being transparent, clear and precise? Do you make sure your customers know exactly what they are getting for their money – exactly what it will cost them? Is the transaction experience pleasant for them?
• Are you always on time? Are you accurate when it comes to when your team will arrive on the premises and how long it will take to do the job?
• Do you keep the customer informed at all times as to how the job is coming along? Do you communicate with them immediately when something goes wrong, telling them why, what you can do about it and how much more it will cost, if it does cost more?
• How about the work site? Do you keep it clean and uncluttered? No loud music or smoking or raucous behavior. Are all your associates courteous to your customer?
• When the job is complete do you take the time to do a walk through with your customers to make sure they are satisfied with the work you have completed? They should be delighted enough for you to ask them for a reference or testimonial.
• And finally, do you follow up a week later to make sure they are still happy with your work? This is the time to ask them how you did and if they would use you again. This is the time to make them a customer for life.

Now that you’ve looked at all aspects of your business, the service you perform and how you performed it, are you happy? Is this the way you want people to see your company? If it’s not, then fix what needs fixing. If it is, then good for you. But don’t stop there. The best way to keep growing your company is to always be finding ways to make the customer experience better. That’s the right way to grow your company.

by Dan Beaulieu
Business consultant

I love Mexican food. I love Mexican restaurants and I have been in many of them from El Paso, Texas, to Tucson, Arizona, to San Jose, California, to Bangor, Maine, to Portland, Maine, to Waterville, Maine, to Augusta, Maine. And get this, my favorite part of being in a Mexican restaurant is not necessarily the food. I like what I like (Carnitas Fajitas) but I am certainly no connoisseur of the food. Nope my favorite part of being in a Mexican restaurant is at the start of the experience (not even the meal yet) when we all sit there and have a drink ( and get this, I don’t even like Margaritas! But I do like a cold beer) and I like best of all the camaraderie. The sheer joy of being there.

And consider this, if you own one of these establishments. Most of your money is made with the beginning of the meal. That experience before the meal even starts is when you really make your money.

A good Margarita in a good restaurant will cost from $11 to $13 (which I think is a fair price value for what you are getting.) And if you have four people at the table, chances are they have already paid 50 bucks before they even order the meal.

And then they might order special queso and chips for another $10, and, or some special Guac for another $10 and before you know it the tab is now at $75 and no food yet. Man if I own that restaurant I am in 7th Heaven. And the best part for that owner or manager is that chances are the folks are going to order another round to go with the meal! Man you are getting into the five figure neighborhood already! Ole!

Now, let’s get to the dilemma, the thing I just cannot understand and that’s the salsa, the quality, the taste, and the amount. Look anyway you cut it salsa has to be pretty cheap to make. And it is probably even cheaper to buy. Heck, I have seen salsa, pretty good tasting national brand salsa in gallon jugs for ten bucks or so. I think that it can be said that salsa is a pretty cheap but very important part of any meal in any Mexican restaurant.

So, here’s my beef, and please remember I have been nice so far. I have been to two very good, in fact, outstanding Mexican restaurants in the past two months that serve salsa in those little plastic take out cups. You know the ones where you might get mayo or ketchup on the side in a takeout bag! All I ask is, why? Why would you possibly do that? It’s as though you are tacitly saying “okay, this is all the salsa you’re going to get so drink your drink, order your food, eat and get out, someone else wants this table!” Which, of course, is the exact opposite message you want to convey in any restaurant. Especially a Mexican restaurant where the bill/ tab is so front loaded.

If you serve great salsa and plenty of it, like a soup bowl full of it at a time, people are going to love it, they are going to eat it up and yes, the more important part they are going to extend this chip and salsa eating,

Margarita buying and drinking part of that entire meal experience! Without a doubt great chips and salsa and plenty of it will increase your drink sales by at least 50 percent and for little or no extra money! The least expensive part of this pre-meal experience (for you the restaurant owner) is the salsa.

So please, please, please, more salsa please. And that is a fantastic way to grow your business.

by Dan Beaulieu
Business consultant

The tide has changed when it comes to employers and employees. Certainly, there is a shortage of the latter which is causing significant problems for all businesses, especially smaller ones. We are seeing restaurants both large and small including take out places, closed on Monday and Tuesday for lack of people to work those days and also to give their very hard working employees a break from the many hours they are putting on the days they do work.

It is much more difficult to get people to work at our houses. There is a shortage of everyone from landscapers to roofers to plumbers to electricians to just about every business you can think of.

This is an obvious problem, but it also reflects a more longstanding problem and that is one of the traditionally imbalanced relationship between the worker and the boss.

For years hard working people considered a job a privilege. They were proud and happy they had a job. But in the last few years not so much. It is now an employees’ market and will be for a number of years to come. This means that the employers have to change their ways and change their company cultures in favor of the employees.

One of the companies with a multi-million dollars electronics company recently hired 13 people…now a few weeks later two are left, all the others left in a matter of days once they saw that although the pay was good, the work was hard.

Now as a solution we have gone to work on that company’s culture. We are implementing a program that will change the culture of the company focusing more on the engagement of the employees by making them feel a sense of ownership in the company. Among the initiatives we are instituting are:

• Creating an orientation and training plan for every new employee teaching them about the company, and the industry, showing them a bigger picture than just their department.
• Showing them a future. Creating a career path for them that demonstrates when they can go in a year, five years towards making a good and financially profession in our field.
• Constant communications: Keeping all employees involved with the progress of the company by holding, among other things, monthly “all hands” meetings
• Offering small bonuses from introducing a potential employee to the company, paying them if that person is hired.
• Making the new employees, and all the employees for that matter, like they are important stake holders in the company and instituting profit sharing programs where, if the company does well, everyone will be rewarded.
• And finally, honestly caring about each and every one who works at the company, making sure that everyone feels they matter.

When all is said and done, people want to feel they matter, that their brain is as important as their hands, that their opinion is listened to and values as well.

No matter what size business you have from a factory with 200 people to a pizza shop with ten people, to a landscaping business with four people, applying these principles changing your company’s culture in this direction will go a long way towards solving your man and woman power issues. And yes, it’s a great way to grow your business.

by Dan Beaulieu
Business consultant

There is no better time to start a service business. Yes you read that right, this is a great time to start a small service business. I’ll add to that, if you are a skilled craftsperson there has never been a better time to go into business for yourself.

Let me explain, if you are an electrician, plumber, carpenter, landscaper, stone worker, or any type of skilled laborer, this is the time to hang your shingle.

Why now? Simple, there are not enough of your type to go around. All the bigger companies and yes, of course, even the smaller ones are booked out through next year. They can’t handle the work they have. Some of them are not even answering the phone when it comes to new business.

But the business is there. As people climb out of the pandemic they need things done to their homes. For over two years people have put off doing what has needed to be done in their homes and in their places of business. And now when they need someone to work on their projects from house painting to roofing to carpentry, to plumbing, they just cannot find anyone to do the work…at least right now.

Not being able to get satisfaction from their current services companies, people are not even able to get the companies and people who they once used to even acknowledge their calls. They are being forced to look for alternate sources.

They are looking for anyone who meets their needs, right now, not in a month, not in three months or five months or a year, they need someone right now.

If you have always dreamt of being your own boss, now is the perfect time to make that dream come true. People…customers are looking for you.

All you have to do is make people know that you are in business and you are available.

Here are some of the things you can do to get started:

• Set up your company. You can even do this on line for a couple of hundred dollars.
• Develop a business plan. This does not have to be complicated. Just some good strategic thinking, answering a few simple questions like:
• The name of your company
• What your company does
• Who are your customers?
• What needs do you fill? What services do you provide?
• Get your name out there. Make it easy for people to find you.
• Place an ad in a local newspaper like this one (The Town Line)
• Put your ad on local bulletin boards
• Put flyers in doors or on car windshields (In some communities you will need a permit to do this).
• Anything that will let people know you are now in business and will provide them with the services they are looking for…right now!

If you do these things people will find you and get in touch with you (a small basic web site would be great as well)

Then answer your phone and get started.

Right now, it is as simple as that. And if you are skilled and if you are ambitious you can get started immediately. In a matter of days, you can be growing your business.