Garden Know How

The Kricket Krap Story:
The Best Organic Fertilizer We Know
What is Nursery Mix?

Come back later to look for these other online articles:
How to Use Kricket Krap
for House Plants
Kricket Tea:
Nourish Plants Year-round
Compost: Black Gold
For The Garden
Composting: Art, Science,
and Common Sense
Thirsty & Hungry Flowers
Crave PansyMate

The Kricket Krap Story: The Best Organic Fertilizer We Know

By Bill Bricker, Sr.

This story is funny now, but far from that when it happened. We learned about cricket droppings as a fertilizer in 1984 from the same friend who suggested many years before to go into the composting business. When Bert Botz suggested using the digested waste of fish bait crickets on my garden, I nearly broke up laughing, but the joke was on me. We tested it extensively and broadcast the results on Jim Bennett's The Weekend Gardener Show. After comparing it with other organics, the cricket droppings were a sure winner.

Why is Kricket Krap So Good? It's What the Crickets Eat.

Crickets that are used for fish bait are small and they have a very short digestive tract. Nowadays crickets are sold for reptiles, monkeys, and hummingbirds as well. This was not so before we first introduced Kricket Krap to the world 20 years ago. We had discovered the real secret is in their diet. They constantly eat a very high protein diet of blood meal, fish meal, soybean meal, ground corn, and molasses. It totals about 25% protein and about 10% of the manure we collect has been mixed with the chow that the cricket scratches while eating. This makes for a very effective slow release fertilizer with a quick kick. This composition makes Kricket Krap last for several months depending on the weather and the amount of rainfall. When it is cold there is no release and when it warms up and the plants needs it, bingo!. Most all plants love it: shrubs, trees, vegetables, roses, you name it.

What's in a Name?

After we checked out the test results, Lou Ellen, my wife, named the product CC-84 standing for Cricket Crap discovered in 1984. She had previously been instrumental in coming up with names and logos for other products. This name was tried in the local Augusta area and on national Television, but it just did not fly. We changed the name to Gotta Grow and still no go. The years went by and still no luck until Milo McGahee of the Augusta paper recommended to me to name it Kricket Krap. The sound was there and maybe this is what we needed--to call it what it is. We knew we were on the right track when Col Cliff Quilicci, USMC, my previous boss and friend gave some CC-84 to a friend way out in Reno, Nevada. The friend’s name was Ty Cobb and the story was entitled, "Kricket Krap® is not anything to Poo-Poo". We knew we had the magic name and immediately went to Washington, DC to get it registered.

Within weeks, seemingly everyone started writing and talking about Kricket Krap®. Disc Jockeys called wanting to know how we picked up the droppings. Jokingly, I told them, "We have wee little people, with wee little shovels, who go out in the wee hours of the morning to pick up the wee bits of cricket doo." Jim Wilson, host of the PBS Victory Garden wrote of me, "He cleans up after 2 billion crickets." This started a parade of headlines. To include: Fertilizer Firm Has Multitude of Employees; Cricket Dung is Choice Food for Plants - Really; Cricket Manure’s in Demand; Home Gardeners Chirp for Cricket Manure; Crickets Contribute Good Luck To Unusual Organic Fertilizer; You Can Smell Success in Georgia with Kricket Krap®; Cashing in on Crickets for Sweet Smell of Success; They Called a Spade a Spade and Fertilizer Took Off. Jim later wrote an article about the headlines themselves. This list of clever headlines is still growing.

Most everyone, including all of the major newspapers in the USA, the garden and business magazines, radio/TV loved the product name Kricket Krap. The only exception was most notably Ma Bell of the South. In a funny twist of fate that turned to our advantage. We found out we were in disfavor when we wanted to put the name in the Yellow Pages. Our local reps thought it was great, but, the heads on high, said no. They reasoned the name Kricket Krap might be offensive to some of their customers. I pointed out that crap had been used for years and certainly in this day and age was not a bad word. Never-the-less, Kricket Krap was not listed in the phone book. AP in Atlanta heard of the dispute and took sides with us little guys, resulting in international news coverage for our product. Another year passed and Ma Bell still would not yield. Local lawyers volunteered to help without charge, we declined and waited. AP again picked up the story and around the world it went again. After three years they backed off and we were finally in the Yellow Pages. When you consider the free press we got for NOT having to pay for an ad, well, that's the best dollar-for-dollar business expense I ever had.

It's in the Mail

We finally had a product with the right name that waslight enough to package and sell via mail order. This was achieved through the support of the family and most notably my son, Bill Bricker, II and his wife, Lorrie. Bill is a magician on the computer as well as being a talented artist. Lorrie’s administrative abilities and keen eye made for a great team. With their combined talent, a mail order catalog which we called our Yardending Wish Book came into being. The name Wish Book was what the Sears & Roebuck catalog was called many years ago, and was found in the crapper of most homes years gone by. Our first mail order Wish Book consisted only of one sheet of paper. A far cry from the 24 pages it became at its final printing. It contained our products as well as stories about Bricko, my gardening experience, recycling, making compost and new products we have tested, etc. People liked our folksy approach to cataloging. The articles I wrote for it became the core of my book Garden Know How.

The Experts Agree

No matter how good your product is you must have help to promote it nationally. We are fortunate to have such help from national gardening experts such as Jim Bennett, TNN’s Weekend Gardener, and Jim Wilson, host of the Victory Garden South on PBS, Virgil Adams of the Atlanta Constitution, the many Garden Writers of America, and a host of newspaper columnist.

We will never forget the first day that we went to see Jim Bennett with the objective of obtaining some advertising from the Weekend Gardener. Jim was still in his back yard in Aiken SC working on making his show what it is today. He was so intrigued with our product he followed us back to Augusta. This was the beginning of a long-lasting friendship, a lot of free publicity, and one heck of a lot of fun. It is a shame the cute Kricket Krap name had not been found at that time. We learned from Jim and he learned from us. A great person and one of the most creative men we know.

No one will ever know how much Virgil Adams contributed to our success. Virgil was a University of Georgia hard-core Seven Dust, chemical fertilizer communicator for the University. After he retired, he still gardened and wrote about the synthetic way of gardening. After many years of trying to obtain his support, he visited the farm. This visit plus the fact the organic movement was arriving in Atlanta started Virgil writing about our products. He used the products and was so impressed he started writing and wrote so much and so often, some people accused Bricko of paying Virgil for his copy. Everyone in our area knows that no amount of money can buy Virgil Adams. He is a great man, honest, hardworking and the world’s best gardener. We all look forward to seeing Mary and Virgil once per year at least. They used to come down regularly all the way from Jefferson, GA to buy a truck load of Bricko goodies, see the beautiful sights, and have some of our most tasty Bricko BBQ at our annual picnic.

To Jim Wilson, we owe so much. He saw the value of our products and then brought the name Kricket Krap to everyone’s attention. His story was copied hundreds of times and folks are still trying to come up with a better headline: He Cleans Up Behind 2 Billion Crickets. Jim is the one who convinced me to become a member of the Garden Writers Association of America: an association which we think is one-of-a-kind for its contribution to expanding awareness of horticulture in our great nation. We thank all of these people and the hundreds of other writers for their contribution to our success.