Our History

Grandpa Gosh used to say, “It can be done, by gosh!” It was that attitude that gave his son, Scott, the idea to use his wagon to pick up and then sell horse manure to farms in the area.  Horse owners breathed a sigh of relief at the thought of someone else doing their smelly job.  Farmers grinned at the prospect of a more bountiful harvest.  The Gosh family business in natural fertilizer began inauspiciously in 1936, delivering manure to local customers in a little red wagon.  Meanwhile, his future wife, Joyce, was growing up on the Hermann Spill Farm in Winters, Texas, where they ranched and farmed using manure-based fertilizer.  After they got married they combined their talent and resources to deliver valuable products for lawns and gardens.

In 1970, Scott Gosh though it was time for his two sons to start a business of their own.  Phil was 10 at the time, but that didn’t stop him or his brother from packaging small bags of potting soil, peat moss, decorative stone and yes, manure, to sell to his father’s nursery customers.

They did so well that they acquired a warehouse in Houston the very next year to get the business out of the garage.  At this point they started combining soil with manufactured compost together in larger bags, calling it “Rich Mix”.  Compost products were rare at that time, but customers kept coming back for that stuff that seemed to need less water while making their plants healthier.  Phil never planned to take over the family business, but the money he made selling Rich Mix helped him get a great start on his Correctional Criminology degree in delinquency.

After a few years in college, Phil got back into the nursery business, managing Happy Meadows Nurseries to help his dad recover from a series of financial misfortunes.  He managed multiple nursery stores and 100 employees while finding time to finish his criminal justice degree.  Within 10 years, his dad was back on his feet, enabling Phil to take a year long break.

He got married, traveled the world, worked with kids and returned to work at Happy Meadows, volunteering with teenagers on the side.  They partnered with Austin’s award winning wastewater treatment plant to pioneer Dillo Dirt.  They introduced Triple Power Compost along with the “Beauty Grows” and “Texas Friendly” lines of soil and compost, and sold them to Home Depot, as well as through Happy Meadows.  In 1995 Phil took over the family business, using Grandpa Gosh’s saying to unite all their products under one name, Organics By Gosh.

When a fire destroyed everything in 1998, they rebuilt without borrowing money or missing an order. They bagged products in an open pasture.  They converted thrown out tools in the ditch into useful components of their factory.   “It can be done, by gosh!” seemed to ring through their east Austin property.

Organics by Gosh’s rebuilt warehouse and distribution center have bustled with activity since the 1998 fire.  They helped all of Central Texas develop guidelines for sustainable soil development.  Trucks roll in every day with leftovers that people throw away and roll out with soil and compost that rejuvenates the central Texas landscape.

Organics By Gosh has become a team of compost, soil and recycling enthusiasts ready for a promising future.  With their Organic Recycling program, their continual commitment to compost made the smart way, and  an emphasis on giving back to the community, they have plans to change the way people think about the ground they walk on.

Organics By Gosh takes things that people don’t want, adding love, work and creativity to turn them into soils and compost that make the earth a better place to live. That’s not just a fairy tale or a story of a depression-era entrepreneur selling manure.  It’s treating people and our environment the right way.  And that’s something that’s worth being done, by gosh!