Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Dynamite & Sister Companies Give 1,500 Pounds of Plums to Boise Rescue Mission, Idaho Foodbank

For the second year in a row, employees of Dynamite Specialty Products and its sister companies picked more than 1,500 pounds of plums in the test orchard for the Boise Rescue Mission and The Idaho Foodbank.

Approximately three dozen people volunteered to pick the plums in the companies’ 53-acre test orchard for natural fertilizer and related products near Emmett last week. Plums grown with all-natural fertilizers are selling from $2.50 to $4 a pound through the Idaho’s Bounty food cooperative, giving the donation a value of $3,750 to $6,000.

“We understand that these organizations are in desperate need of fresh food. They told us that the plums would be gone in two days,” said Callie Zamzow Novak, Dynamite CEO. “We have a wonderful orchard where we test our all-natural fertilizers and related products, and we can’t think of a better use for the produce. We were so pleased when they told us that these were the best plums they ever had.”

Volunteers to pick the plums came from Dynamite, Zamzows and TerraLife, all owned by the Zamzow family. The companies have been making all-natural fertilizers, animal feed and related products for four generations.

Perhaps the best known product is Thrive, developed as a tree fertilizer and equally effective for vegetable gardening, flower beds and shrubs. It is sold locally at the 10 Zamzows locations in the Boise area.

The fertilizer is distributed to nurseries nationally through TerraLife under the Dr. JimZ Secret Formula and Zamzow’s labels as well through Dynamite, a multi-level marketing company originally founded to distribute high-end nutritional supplements for horses and other animals.

Other products originally tested in the Emmett orchard include a plant wash that spurs growth by increasing photosynthesis, a product that increases blooms on flower plants, and concentrated compost factor, which contains the recently discovered ingredient that triggers plant growth.

Additional information about the products and their uses as tree fertilizer and in vegetable gardening is available at www.zamzows.com, www.dynamitespecialty.com and www.drjimz.com .