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Behind the Business: Malaria, Roses and the Blue Stuff
| Chris Beytes
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>> Published Date: 6/25/2012
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 During World War II, Pennsylvania native Bob Peters was laid up in a hospital bed in Africa suffering from malaria. With time on his hands, and a future after the military to plan, he picked up a book from the library hospital on professions from A to Z. Thumbing through, he came to floriculture—“the growth and study of flowers”—and thought to himself, “I really liked gardening with my mother. I think that’s what I’m going to do.” And just like that Bob, who would eventually make Peters a greenhouse-hold name in fertilizers, chose a path into the garden.
Pictured: Three generations of Peters. Photos courtesy of J.R. Peters Inc.
Once out of the military, Bob used his G.I. Bill benefits to enroll in the horticulture program at Farmingdale State College. As a student, he was assigned the care of the hydroponic rose beds (at that time, grown in gravel culture, the new technology of the day). He learned to test the irrigation water and plant tissue, and to supply all the nutrients the plants needed. He became fascinated with plant nutrition and the testing process, and decided to make that his profession.
After graduation, Bob borrowed some money from his aunt to start a testing lab business, Horticultural Services, which he housed in his mother’s Pennsylvania garage.
Recalls Bob’s son, Jack, now president of J.R. Peters Inc., “He would go out and get samples from the cut flower growers that were along Route 1 from New York City out through Long Island, through Trenton, New Jersey, the Philadelphia market, right down into Baltimore—all cut flower ranges.” Bob learned much about rose nutrition during that time, including the secondary and trace elements they need and the balance between all the nutrients needed to grow a successful crop. Cut flower growers of the day grew in field soil that was carried into the greenhouse beds, then replaced every year (eventually they’d move to steam sterilization). Bob would test the soil and determine how to amend it, then mail the results to the grower. “All for $2!” says Jack.
For five years, Bob tried to make the laboratory work as his sole business. But with a young family to feed (Jack was born in 1948), he knew he needed to expand the business to generate more income. Enter fertilizer.
At the time, Bob was recommending single-element fertilizers to his grower clients. There were virtually no pre-made fertilizer blends on the market. Realizing that good plant nutrition required a balanced blend of nutrients, he began developing NPK fertilizers with micronutrients to sell to his growers based on their crops, and soil and water quality. One of his first cut flower products to help growers grow a better crop was 20-5-30—low in phosphorus, because P was tending to accumulate in the soil.
Fortuitously, in the early 1960s, Cornell researchers James Boodley and Raymond Sheldrake Jr., friends and colleagues of Bob’s, developed the first soilless “peat-lite” potting mixes. A blend of peat moss, vermiculite and perlite, the peat-lite mixes had no nutrients of their own, which opened up the door for Bob to develop fertilizer blends specifically for the new mixes. Bob was in the right place at the right time (“A little luck never hurts,” Jack says his dad often says), and Peters’ peat-lite mixes and their blue dye became ubiquitous in greenhouses across America.
After earning a degree in marketing from Villanova University and spending time working for ARCO oil, Jack joined the family testing and fertilizer business full-time in 1974.
The success of Peters fertilizer attracted attention. “In 1979, W.R. Grace came along and made my dad an offer for the business that was great for the family and tough to say no to, for the expansion of the Peters name and product line.” Bob and Jack got long-term contracts with W.R. Grace. Grace merged with Sierra Chemical (the Osmocote guys) in 1989, and in 1992, Grace-Sierra was sold to The Scotts Company. Through the whole process, Jack was still in Allentown, Pennsylvania, working with the research side or the marketing people or production … “I wore a lot of different hats,” he recalls.
In 1997, Jack had the opportunity to buy back the family’s old manufacturing facility and laboratory and go back into the fertilizer business. The Peters name, however, was retained by Scotts. What to do?
“I basically had to come up with a brand new name for the products. Obviously, the easiest one for me to remember is my first name,” Jack recalls with a chuckle. “And most people knew me by Jack, so it wasn’t a big stretch for them to identify when I said ‘Jack’s back.’”
Hence J. R. Peters’ “Jack’s Classic” and “Jack’s Professional.” On the market now since 1997, Jack’s fertilizers are again meeting the needs of professional growers as well as home gardeners (Jack’s Classic is available exclusively through independent garden centers).
But just as importantly, they continue the testing that Bob started 65 years ago this year. Jack’s daughter, Cari, serves as vice president of the company and spends much of her time in greenhouses visiting with growers and developing new products. “What’s so nice about our family business is that if you have a question, you can call our tech support and actually get an answer from myself or my Dad,” Cari says proudly. “We love our customers and are proud to see the success of our growers.”
Jack admits it’s tough to see the family name on a competing product, but says the Jack’s line has made good progress developing its own identity with cutting-edge products. For instance, in 2002, Jack introduced the first FeED fertilizer formula, Petunia Feed 20-3-19, with a blend of three different iron chelates (the Fe in FeED). This product was specifically designed in response to a nutritional problem growers were having with petunias. The success of Petunia Feed has challenged Jack and Cari to develop more specialty formulas to meet the requirements of the newest growing segments, including high tunnel vegetables and hydroponic formulas.
“We certainly know who the growers are, and we know how to build product,” Jack says. “We haven’t lost our touch with the marketplace or how to develop fertilizers to meet growers’ needs.”
“And the company is still called J. R. Peters Inc.,” he adds. “If you look on a bag of our product, you still see a Peters name. For three generations our company has been providing quality, excellence and customer service, from our family to yours.” GT
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