Aaron Perry
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Lem Tingley, Owner and Chief Growing Officer (CGO) of Growing Spaces, shares the magic and resilience of the robust geodesic greenhouse grow domes that his company manufactures in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. In this episode, Lem leads us on a tour of several domes: at the Pagosa High School with Principal Sean O’Donnell, at the Geothermal Greenhouse Partnership in downtown Pagosa Springs, and at the Growing Spaces headquarters where several domes of different sizes are on display.
Each dome is a unique sanctuary – capable of maintaining warmer, sub-tropical conditions during cold winter months – an important aspect of sustainability and food security in many regions. Seven features make the Growing Spaces domes unique: its geodesic shape (can withstand extreme wind loads, snow loads, hail, etc.), polycarbonate panels (strong and durable), above-ground pond (thermal mass for temperature regulation), north wall insulation, automatic vents (powered by temperature-sensitive beeswax-filled pistons!), under-soil climate control, and an insulated foundation wall.
Lem discusses how Growing Spaces donates profits back to the community, and supports several urban and low-income food production projects around the United States, including with the Navajo Nation, the Mattersville Vets, and the Urban Growers Collective in Chicago. Growing Spaces offers Garden Grants for schools, communities, and non-profits (growingspaces.com/gardening-grants), and in partnership with the Y on Earth Community, Growing Spaces is offering a 5% discount on domes, and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Y on Earth Community to support it’s community mobilization work (growingspaces.com/yonearth).
Lem grew up outside Boston, MA, visited Colorado every year as a kid for ski vacations, and fell in love with the Rocky Mountain west at an early age. He attended the University of Colorado – Boulder and graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, which led to working for the last 25 years in manufacturing, both in Colorado and off-shore. Lem and his wife Liz live in Golden, CO with their three teenage boys.
He was laid-off from his previous job, and felt like it was a good opportunity to either start or purchase a company in the sustainable technology field. Having heard of Growing Spaces through his brother-in-law, and having learned that the founder-owners were retiring and selling the business, Lem and Liz jumped on it. They immediately visited Pagosa Springs to meet Udgar and Puja Parsons, the founders of Growing Spaces, and fell in love with them and what they had created in this small town in Colorado. Lem and his wife purchased Growing Spaces in April, 2018, and are now expanding the company organically.
RESOURCES:growingspaces.com/yonearthgrowingspaces.com/grants-for-school-greenhousegrowingspaces.com/food-insecurity-charitiesyoutube.com/channel/UCnjjXOtie5CuMu2BPjVOQAQfacebook.com/GrowingSpacesGreenhousesfacebook.com/groups/growing.dome.enthusiastsinstagram.com/growing_spaces
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Welcome to the YonEarth Community Podcast. I’m your host, Aaron Perry, and today we’re
visiting with Lem Tingley, the CEO and CGO of growing spaces. That CGO Chief Growing
Officer. Lem, it’s great visiting with you. Great to be here, nice to have you. We’re
so excited to get to experience the inside of your domes and share with our
audience a bunch of the specifics as to how you’re helping people in
communities all over grow a lot more food right in their own yards, right in
their own neighborhoods. And of course we’ve also got some special discounts if
you’re interested in getting a dome through growing.growingspaces.com. So we’ll
get to all that information for folks. But first let me tell people a little
about your background. So Lem grew up outside Boston, Massachusetts and came to
Colorado every year as a kid for ski vacations. So you fell in love with the
Rocky Mountain West at an early age. He attended the University of
Colorado in Boulder and graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering, which
led to working for the last 25 years in manufacturing both in Colorado and
offshore. Lem is married to his wife Liz and they live in Golden Colorado with
their three teenage boys. I guess you guys are busy. And so he shared with us that
he was laid off from his previous job in engineering and felt like it was a
good opportunity to either start or purchase a company in some sort of
sustainable technology. And so having heard of growing spaces through his brother
in law and having learned that the founder owners were retiring and selling
their business, Lem and Liz jumped on it. And they immediately came down to
Pugosa Springs, which is where we are, to meet Udgar and Pooja Parsons. And you’ll
get to see a little interview with them later on the founders. And they fell in
love with them and what they had created in this small town in Colorado. So Lem
and his wife purchased growing spaces in April of 2018 and are now expanding
the company organically. And Lem, it’s just it’s such a joy to know a bit about
your story, how you got here and what you’re what you’re doing now with the
company going forward. And I guess let me just first start by asking what was it
about, you know, Colorado that caused you to fall in love with this place.
Yeah, I was a big skier growing up back east and you know you have to learn to
just be on ice back there. So that’s all you get is big, you know, blue ice. So
coming out to Colorado every week with Utah, Wyoming, every year, I was just a
joy. And I remember one year, I think junior year in high school, we came to
Brecht for a week in February, how to date every day, just skiing powder
every day. And my parents talked me into visiting CU Boulder on the way back to
the airport. On the way back, we visited Boulder. It was 70 degrees in sunny
in the middle of February. Kids were outside in their shorts, playing frisbee,
just having a ball. And you know, I love hiking and biking and all that. So it
just felt like just a beautiful environment to be at and study and then also get
to get some skiing in at the same time. So it was purely for selfish reasons. But
I’ve never regretted it and never moved out of Colorado since until 18. Yeah, yeah.
I think that’s a familiar story for a number of us. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to
me. Well, you know, I’m so interested to hear more about your your
engineering background and how you’re going to apply that in our applying that to
improve some efficiencies in your manufacturing process. And you know, these
domes are extraordinary. They’re extraordinarily strong structures. They create
these growing environments in cold climates where we can grow tropical and
subtropical plants. So maybe can you just give us an overview of where we are
right now and what growing spaces is making available to people? Yeah,
absolutely. We’re here in Pagosa Springs. Growing spaces has six different sizes
domes that we sell. We’re currently in the 33-foot diameter dome, which is our
second biggest size later today. I’ll show you some 42-foot domes that we have
down at the geothermal partnership. But we have all the other smaller sizes here
on site ranging from 15 feet all the way up to the 42 feet. So this is our second
biggest dome. We get a lot of food gardening space in here. Behind us, you see
water tank. This is basically the battery of the system. It acts as a thermal
mass, both in the summertime to help keep the dormant dome cool and humid. And in
the winter time, the sun will reflect off that reflectic insulation, keep the
pond during the day, and then a night emit that heat back out and keep your
plants warm and moist all night long, all winter long, without any external heat.
So you don’t need any electricity, propane, as long as you’re doing cross-party
plants in the winter time. If you want to do tropicals, grow tomatoes, year-round,
you can. You just need to add a little bit of heat to your dome during the cold
response. Yeah. But otherwise, you’re growing year-round without any additional
possible. It’s amazing. And you told me beforehand that you guys have domes in
every state. Is that correct? That’s correct. Yeah. Over the 30-year history of
growing spaces, we’ve shipped probably about 3,000 domes to all 50 states,
about 15 countries across the globe. The dome definitely works best in the Rocky
Mountain climate here in Colorado, about half our sales are here in Colorado.
Because of the extreme weather, we use a five-log poly, which is really as a high
R value, almost three, as well as the snow-resistant, hail-resistant, and just the
shape of the geodesic dome, the Buckminster Fuller dome, really is good
against the wind. It really just pushes the dome back down into the earth, so
you’re never going to have your rectangular greenhouse get hit by a flat
surface and get blown off your property. The way it goes. A lot of
dome owners calling it. My greenhouse is in my neighbor’s yard, right? We need
something a little more wind-resistant. Oh, the geodesic shape is perfect. But the
real value of it is it tracks the sun all day long. You get nice, even sun for
your plants all day long. You don’t have any flat surfaces when you make your
plants during the new day sun, and you just get nice, even sun throughout the day.
It’s another great tool to do this shape. Yeah, well this is so wonderful. So a
little later on, we will visit with one of your gardeners and educators, Heather
Gray, talking about soil and how to care best for the plants in this kind of
environment. And then later we’re actually going to go over to Pagosa High
School and visit with the principal over there. And they’re building a dome right
now for their students, right? I’m really excited about that. Yeah, they’re
building a 42-foot dome for their students, both their vocational students and
their culinary arts students. Yeah, that’s really awesome. They’re given those
students that kind of exposure and experience so early on in their
professional lives really. Yeah, yeah. And then after that we’ll visit with the
founders of this company, Pujan, Udgar Parsons, who have been real pioneers in
this whole sustainability movement for for several decades. So it’s going to be a
real treat. I think the way we get to flow through these different pieces of
the podcast today. Yeah, I’m really excited to meet with Udgar and Udgar. They’ve
been retired for the last two years, but still involved down there with the
domes of the geothermal projects. So we’re doing great work down there for the
community and the local food hubs. So I’m excited to meet with them as well. Yeah,
that’s super exciting. Well, let me let me ask this, you know, these structures,
you know, take some money and one thing we want to be sure to mention to our
audience is that if you mention YonEarth when you connect with growing
spaces, you can connect by growingspaces.com or if you click through the
growing spaces logo anywhere from the YonEarth web ecosystem, our
partnership and sponsor page or our podcast page, you will get a 5% discount
when you get your dome and demand has been so high in large part because of
COVID, it seems that production is out several months. So if you are thinking
about getting a dome, it’s a really good idea to connect with lemon as team soon
to get in the queue. But, you know, one of the things that jumped right out at
Mealem with the information that you sent over is that you guys are not only
selling these domes, you’re doing amazing work with education on YouTube and
through your Facebook groups. And you’re also working with low income
communities and with the Navajo Nation, for example, and you’re doing some
special grants in urban and low income communities related to the Black Lives
Matter movement. And I just, if you would, just speak to that kind of community
service work that you guys are doing because I think it’s extraordinary.
It’s really exciting. I’m excited to be at this point. We’ve had on the business
for two years and our sales were pretty flat from when we took over the
business those first two years. So we were really just trying to pay off our
loans and forgets. And so we didn’t have a lot of, you know, money left over to
kind of do the charitable projects. But when my wife and I bought the business,
we really had the long-term goal to put a portion of our profit back into the
community. So COVID has really been, I mean, it’s been horrible for the world
and the nation, but it’s really is teaching people the value of controlling
their own food source. Be able to go into their backyard and pick their vegetables
for lunch or for dinner, as well as have a nice sanctuary just like we are here
to sit and relax. So the phone’s been ringing off the hook since March. We are
booked out several months. But the benefit of that for us is we’re able to give
back. And so we have one-dome plan for Navajo Nation, like you mentioned. They’ve
been really impacted by COVID. And they’re very family-oriented. And that’s part
of the reason why it’s spread. But they really want to try to get back to their
roots of farming and growing their own food and being self-sustainable. Because
they’ve kind of lost that part of their culture. They’re a Navajo Nation. And
even, you know, we really are in a food desert. They don’t have access to fresh
organic food. So we’ve met some people down there. The founders of Garam Pooja
had built a couple of domes down there as well, who are really trying to bring
back local farming, local family farms to the community. So we’ve donated one of
our 26-foot greenhouses to Navajo Nation. We do have a fundraiser that we
link to from our website to help with the some of the site prep, the bed
materials, the soil, everything else that goes into that project. It’s on their
our Facebook page right now. But another project I’m really excited about that
we started before COVID was with a local veterans community called Matterville
Vets. And they’re based in the Denver area. And they have two communities, one in
Sedalia and one in Hartsell, Colorado. What they’re doing is building tiny
home sustainable communities for veterans with PTSD to kind of give them a
place to really a sanctuary for them to really recover, as well as grow their
own food, do their own work around the property and really be awkward and
sustainable. And one unique thing about that project is they’ve adopted some
wolves from a wolf from Rocky Mountain Wildlife Refuge that were the owner
retired. And so now they’ve paired the vets with PTSD with the wolves. So the
wolves are trained to comfort the vets. They have nightmares and it’s just an
amazing place. My kids and I have been up there to help build pens and kind of
get the property in Sedalia built up. And then the next step is to start doing
the site prep and we’ve donated a 26-foot greenhouse for them as well. So they
could grow their own food year round. Wow. Yeah, Matterville Vets. So we’re really
excited about that project. Yeah, and there’s quite a bit of research coming out
about how working with soil and working with plants really helps with PTSD.
And there are different veterans communities doing these sorts of gardening
projects for that very reason. The neuro biochemistry is affected and it just
allows people people’s nervous systems to calm down. Right. Which is so
important. Right. It’s so important for, yeah, special needs kids and
education. We’ve had examples and when we go down to the GGP dome and the
education dome of special needs kids who really do just calm down when they
enter the dome. Get their hands dirty. This is night and day. So it’s really
exciting to be part of this project. Yeah, it’s really beautiful. Well, in just
spending some time in the Pagosa community today, it’s clear this is a this is a
really tight knit community. And what you guys are doing here as a local
manufacturer providing jobs and all of that is also a great benefit to the
local economy. Yeah, so when we do hire a lot of veterans, we have a lot of
veterans on staff. We’ll visit the vocational school where they’re building the
dome. We really hope to use that program to hire new kids because what happens
here in Pagosa is a lot of kids that go out of high school and then they leave
town. Yeah, and there’s a huge gap in the workforce. There is a lot of
construction in town. So there’s a lot of construction jobs. There’s a lot of
restaurant jobs, huge tourist industry, but there is a gap in that kind of
millennial range of good workforce. So we’re trying to bring in people not only
to help the manufacturer the domes and install the domes, but gardeners, sales
people, and our sales people are gardeners. So we can really kind of help our
customers through the learning experience when it comes to growing in a new
dome because the technology really sells itself. We’re not really sales
people. Everybody but me here is a gardener. I can’t say that I’m a gardener,
but I’m learning. You’re a gardener in training. I’m a gardener in training, and that’s why I’ve
lined up Heather and Ugar and Pooja to kind of help kind of talk about the
gardening aspect of the dome. That’s great. I’m learning and I’m learning in our
dome in Golden as well. And you know, it was wonderful to recently have the
opportunity to interview my good buddy Brian Dillon with his dome up in the
mountains. And he was sharing that the the Facebook groups are this
amazing online community where people are sharing information and you guys are
active. And I’m just curious if you might describe for our audience a little
bit kind of what’s going on in that ecosystem. Yeah, absolutely. We have two
Facebook groups. One’s called growing dome enthusiasts and one’s called
growing dome owners. So growing dome owners is limited to owners only. So that’s
where we get a lot of really good conversations about how the dome is
performed. You know, we talk about test problems. We talk about cooling your
dome in the summertime. We talk about heating your dome in the winter. If
you’re going to heat your dome in the winter, different ways of optimizing your
dome, they’re getting a lot into aquaponics systems, hydroponic systems,
decks built over the pond. But the growing dome enthusiast page is actually
really thriving as well. And that’s other people who are interested in purchasing
a dome are really just interested in greenhouse gardening or geodesic
technology can come and ask questions more about the planning of the
growing dome, what it takes to get through your building department, your HOA,
the foundation techniques. And we have a lot of owners on that site as well,
giving advice to future owners. And then we’re always monitoring and making
sure, you know, their questions are getting answered. But it’s very low touch
for us because we have a huge community of growing dome owners who are on those
pages, helping our customers out. As well as nationally, if they’re not in
Colorado and don’t have the ability to come to either Golden or Pagosa to see a
dome, they can ask, hey, I’m in Pennsylvania. Does anybody have a dome I can see?
And people will raise their hands and say, yeah, come check out my dome.
Yeah, it’s a really good community. Yeah, absolutely. You know, speaking of
community, one of the things we’ve been observing through the Winers Community
Network in this time of COVID, as more and more people are gardening and wanting
to take back more control over their food supply, we’re seeing in many HOAs
and in many, you know, apartment complexes and so forth. A lot of folks don’t
have the ability to garden. In some HOAs, we’re seeing that it’s essentially
required to spray poisons to kill things like dandelions, right, which is
really sad and makes no sense. And I know you and I have begun a
conversation around some of the efforts that YonEarth is cooking up to help
kind of move the HOA frameworks forward so that we’re not poisoning our
kids and our pets in our communities and we’re making gardening a more central
aspect of our American culture. And I’m curious with the domes, what kind of
issues you’ve been running into with different HOAs out there? Yeah, really
similar issues. I mean, HOA boards kind of see the dome as a very unique
structure. They’re non rectangular, so they kind of look different. So anytime
you have a community, so that doesn’t look right, they’re not going to allow it
in the community regardless of what it’s for. But you mentioned my brother-in-law
who kind of turned us on to growing spaces. When he first went to his HOA, they
did reject him, 100% of the board rejected him. And then growing spaces actually
helped them with the presentation to really talk about the benefit of the dome,
what he was trying to accomplish. He’d had a stroke, his life has health issues,
so growing healthy organic food year-round was a real benefit to their own health.
He showed pictures of inside the dome and the vegetables, and he went back with
that information, and they approved it unanimously. So as soon as they kind of
learned what the dome was for and really the beauty of the entire structure and
the inside of the dome, they approved it. So we really do help our customers
try to navigate that HOA process and really talk about the benefits of the dome.
Yeah, it seems so important that a lot of what we’re running into with barriers
and roadblocks is a matter of education, huh? And presenting the information in a way that’s
not threatening and explains benefits. Yeah, exactly. We had a dome owner from the Ukraine actually
who came to the US and in the Ukraine. Everybody’s front yard, everybody’s back yard was a garden.
And she came to the US and saw all these green grass everywhere. And so where do you
grow your food? I don’t understand. And so they bought a huge property up in Bailey, Colorado,
huge gardens, a traditional greenhouse as well as a 42-foot growing dome, and they’re just
growing life-raising. She’s actually a chef at a local restaurant, so she grows from a restaurant.
Oh wow, it’s a really good story. I know there’s a lot of organizations out of boulders that are
really working on turning transition people’s yards into gardens so we can have more local food
sources. And then like you said, we need to eliminate the rest of the silence around.
Right, yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think it’s so important to stress, to emphasize this
connection between local, fresh, organic food and maintaining our health and well-being
and avoiding disease. And you know, we have so many folks in our culture suffering from all kinds
of diseases. Well, a lot of the times the food that we’re eating is so disconnected from the
healthy soil and so on. It’s critical that we make that connection very close a part of everyday
life and it seems that the domes make that possible in a lot of different contexts to the people.
Absolutely. It all starts with the soil. When we meet Heather, she’ll talk about what she’s
done in our domes with the soil. We made a transition in March when when COVID first hit, our domes
used to be really about the beauty of the dome and the variety of the dome. You could really grow
anything you want in these, but we made a shift to really focus on production. The food hubs
were struggling here even before COVID because it is a food desert here in Pagosa. We just did
get a natural grocer, so we’re all excited about that. I hear in Pagosa, but we’re donating all the
food from these five domes into local food hubs and she’s been really, she’s really done a great job
transitioning the domes to optimize production of fruits and vegetables. Are you finding there’s a
particular fruit or vegetable that seems to just thrive and produce a ton in the food? We already
say tomatoes. We’ve put a tomato on our logo because it just takes take off. I’ve seen tomatoes just
all take over some dollars. Apparently you have to trim them every day. And when we go down to the
geothermal project, they’re doing really well with their tomatoes as well. We always say tomatoes
are doing doing amazing, but so much so many other things thrive. Swiss charred olives, those
kale, grapes, grapes are great because they provide natural shade to the dome and then you can train
them up on the southwest side to really provide some additional natural shade as well as natural
transportation. The more vegetation you have in the dome, you’ll just feel the energy, you’ll feel
the moisture come off the plants. It’s a really nice environment. It really does feel like you’re in
control. Yeah, I love it. And I’m just observing that the charred you have over here in next
dude, it looks like romaine. These plants look picture perfect. I mean, they look so happy. Yeah,
and we’ve been harvesting them like crazy, so it’s amazing. I think it’s amazing. I think we’ve got
some carrots over here, everything you can do really well. Beautiful. It’s really exciting. Well,
and I notice also the rosemary just thrives. And I’ve tried rosemary a bunch of years in
Colorado, and often during the winter months, even if you’re bringing them inside, if they’re
potted, they tend not to do so well, but here they are just jamming. It’s beautiful. Yeah, we’re
very sage-both. Yeah. All kinds of herbs, microbeurings go real well, and you can turn them really
quick, part of the stem, really quick as well. We have a lot of chefs doing microgreens on the
herbs for the restaurants as well. Yeah, that’s so wonderful. Yeah. Well, let me just take this
opportunity to remind our audience that this is the Y on Earth community podcast, and today we’re
visiting with Lim Tigley, the chief growing officer of growing spaces. And I want to thank our
sponsors and give a shout out to the folks who are helping to make this podcast episode possible,
as well as our community mobilization work for soil regeneration, climate action, health and
wellness, neighborhood resilience, and culture kindness. And that includes Earth Coast productions.
In fact, I’ll give a shout out to Artim Nichol Cobb, the owner of Earth Coast. He’s manning the
cameras here for us today. And that includes also the LIDGE Family Foundation. Purium, of course,
growing spaces, and go to growingspaces.com, mention YonEarth, to get a discount.
Soil works, earth water press, and wheylay waters. And of course with wheylay waters,
the CBD infused aroma therapy soaking salts. If you go to yunerf.org slash wheylay dash waters,
you can join the monthly giving program at certain levels and receive monthly shipments of those
soaking salts for your health and well-being. So that’s a wonderful additional bonus there. And then
I want to give a special shout out as well to all the folks who have joined our monthly
giving program at a variety of different levels. And we really appreciate your support.
And everything that we’re doing here is a community effort and is being done on the strength of our
relationships and connecting with leaders like Yulem who are making so much available to folks.
And it’s really such a joy sitting in this space. And I’m wondering, I imagine there must be times
when business can get little stressful at times. And I imagine maybe you might just come out
here sometimes just to be in the dome and be with the plants. Is that part of the experience?
Absolutely. It’s just so relaxing to be in here and just pick some fresh beans off the vine
and taste them while you just sit here and relax and read a book, even make some phone calls in
the dome. It’s just such a relaxing space to be in. It’s amazing. I’m just so thankful to be a part of
it. And you’re very fortunate to come across this business and be able to be a part of it.
Yeah, it’s so beautiful. Well, I’m wondering, should we take a pause on our conversation here and
go visit with Heather and see what she’s doing with the soil and the plants?
Yeah, absolutely. I’ll give you a tour and we’ll meet Heather.
Cool. And then we’ll meet back up here, huh?
Okay. Sounds good. Great.
So hey folks, here we are. We’re in the 18-foot dome and we’re visiting with Heather Gray
who is an educator and gardener par excellence here at Growing Spaces. And so Heather, I’m so excited
for you to share with us some of your techniques, what you’re doing with soil and what you’re doing
with ventilation to maintain super healthy and productive plants here in these domes.
Well, we started with really good soil, alpaca manure and the bedding of the alpacas.
And it wasn’t fully broken down, so we treated it with and continued to treat with
mycorrhiza and good bacteria and fish emulsion and seaweed and proper watering. You know,
not too much, not too little. And just keep it in a healthy environment and slowly, slowly,
it builds to lots and lots of armies. Oh yeah, I see some right there.
Yeah. Beautiful. Are you sure of the camera? Yeah.
There’s small little red wigglers maybe. Yeah, there’s night crawlers in there too.
Okay. But you’ll see them when you go to the 33. Uh-huh.
But you see it’s broken down. It used to be like wood chips and it kind of drained through,
but now it holds water really well. Yeah. And in most cases, people can heal their hydrophobic soil
with this method. You know, sometimes they have to start with a wetting agent. Yep.
But um, which is like usually with Dr. Bronner soap and water kind of thing. Okay.
But then watering in good bacteria, mycorrhiza, um, keeping it moist all the time. So never too
much water enough, not too little. And um, and then good nutrients, you know, building up good by
and multi-biotics. If you can get your hands on way, you know, if you know a local cheese maker,
um, I’ve seen people get very creative with getting probiotics in their sooner. But slowly,
slowly you build a structure and it starts breaking down that material and holding moisture again.
So with the probiotics from like a living crowd, or can she be helpful for soil?
I’ve seen people do it. Wow. They water it down though because of the acidic. Yeah.
The lactobacolus. Yeah. So, um, unless you’re starting with like a really alkaline, like in Colorado,
you know, clay bays. Yeah. Alkaline soil. You could, um, lower the pH by doing something like that.
Yeah. Interesting. And so hydrophobic soil, um, obviously phobic like phobia means the soil doesn’t
like the water, the hydropart. So either drains off or goes straight through. Yeah. So what causes
that in the first place? The soil has died either in extents or like fully died,
where there’s no good bacteria or good fungus in there and the bacteria is what holds the water
in the soil. That’s what like kind of makes it like a sponge. And when the bacteria dies from
not being watered for an extents of period of time or from being solarized, you know, from being
cooked essentially, um, then the soil isn’t alive anymore. It’s basically dust at that point. I
don’t even call it soil at that point. So sometimes dust can be made into soil, but not all the time.
Interesting. Well, this soil is clearly alive and these plants seem amazing. They’re just thriving
and we just ate some of the green beans and some of the tomatoes and they’re so delicious.
And you have a certain technique for how you’re you’re trimming, right?
From the bottom up, everything is really important. Yeah. And why is that so important?
Ventilation is super important and any kind of greenhouse structure. Plant, see this, how it’s
moving the leaves of the plant. So I think the primary focus of ventilation is that the leaves
of plants need to move for the cellular structure of the plant to be strong. They’re using different
methods in different agriculture now where they’re actually manually moving plants and you know,
there’s like a whipping method with plants where they you just you move it like simulate animals
walking by, simulate wind feeding it, simulate rain, pounding on it because all of that just like
people builds the cellular structure and the defenses of the plant. So for numerous reasons,
also fungal diseases that build up in growing spaces of any kind.
For numerous reasons, building the cellular structure and making that plant resilient
is primary focus. And so that’s why you’re trimming from bottom up.
The air can get through so that not a lot of moisture accumulates in the leaves so that also helps
with fungal diseases and also you know catches air and they’re kind of forced up and so they move
around a little bit when the fan is on and they’re just healthier and stronger and they get a
little air through. Yeah all these kale plants seem super healthy it’s really fun to see them I can have some thank you yeah we don’t we don’t turn down
good fresh food yeah so I I’m so thrilled and it sounds like you’re also helping to guide some
of the other gardeners on the team as to how to best take care of the soil and the plants
and that you’re also available to speak with folks who actually have domes of their own right
to help them have success and and what does that look like like what are what are some of the
situations that you hear about most often that you’re you’re helping with mostly problems that
people are having that they don’t know what to plant where or they are having a pest problem
of sometimes that they don’t know how to fix or something that they’re not familiar with like pond
plant issues or I was literally 15 minutes ago on the phone with a lady who needs fresh
so you know it could be any range of things that’s so wonderful to have that real support from
the company I think it really speaks to the the goal and the objective of folks having success
growing in their domes which is wonderful to hear yeah well I so appreciate having this time
with you Heather and I’m wondering before we sign off for the moment is there is there anything
else you’d like to mention or share with our audience if the audience includes people who grow
and domes or greenhouses or structures when you go away for the winter find a way to keep your soil
water that is the biggest thing like soil is alive just like plants it cannot be forgotten and
um you won’t be ultimately successful unless you focus on the health of your soil more than the
health of what’s up top because the root structure of the plant is where all the health of the plant
start so you heard it here from Heather don’t forget the soil especially in this in the winter
yeah yeah beautiful but thank you so much Heather my pleasure nice to meet you likewise
i’ll go get you some hair oh thanks that sounds great solem here we are we we just visited with
Heather that was just wonderful and it’s amazing to see the the incredible expertise she’s bringing
to the care for the soil and the plants here with the domes yeah she’s she’s amazing she’s been
gardening for over 25 years she was with growing spaces for a long time went off to pursue other
ventures so we were very thankful to have her back here growing spaces with us we’ve hired a
couple other younger gardeners to kind of train underneath her so you learn her techniques so she’s
been really a great mentor to them as well as well as the whole team here at growing spaces so she’s
been she’s been great so i thank her very much for taking the time yeah absolutely yeah that was
wonderful well uh you know listen i i’d love to circle back a little more on this work that you’re
doing around the black lives matter movement and uh obviously such a big issue in our culture right
now and and there’s so much healing that’s that’s needed in communities all over and it’s something
you guys are engaging as well with growing spaces huh yeah i talked about the two projects at
Navajo Nation and for for matters bill bets we started those before COVID or right about the time
COVID started so kind of before the latest phase of the black lives movement um we do work with
an organization called urban growers collective out of Chicago they actually purchased the dome right
about the time we bought the business um and we’ve been doing some in kind uh work for them
but i think they’re just a great example of how growing food locally can really improve a
community especially an urban community because you know a lot of people don’t really know but
urban communities can be food deserts as well uh you don’t have access to whole foods a lot of
times even then organic food is so expensive that those communities can afford good fresh organic
food and they find themselves eating it with donalds and maybe not the healthiest food but what
we’ve seen at urban growers collective in South Chicago is it’s really bringing the community together
in multiple aspects not only providing food to the community but providing work you know paid work
as well as volunteer work to the community um you know African-Americans and whites both are working
in the garden uh so what we want to do is we want to do more projects like that basically it was a
comes down to so we’ve offered a grant program for 2021 uh for urban communities specifically
we will be donating growing domes next year uh for urban communities so if you go to our website
you’ll get links to our our gardening grants page uh which has our grant listed as well as many
other uh gardening and community and school garden grants uh listed for these types of communities
to apply for that and then we’ll be uh working with those programs in 2021 uh to help build those
domes because um our season is going to be coming to an end here soon uh a lot of these communities are
in colder climates we prefer it to be in a colder climate just because it’s harder to grow food
year round and the dome will work better in places like South Chicago uh so we’re going to be looking
for communities in more northern climates to to work with to build growing domes so they can grow
food year round and really bring the community together that’s fabulous as you’re as you’re as you’re
describing this i’ve got a few folks coming to mind that i’ll be sure to uh get this information to
because uh this is really going to help i think a lot of different communities out there
right yeah right yeah we’re really going to try to promote it uh from here on out um we’re also yeah
like i said looking for donations for the other projects to help the site prep on things of that
nature because the dome is just a piece of that and then obviously the ongoing uh gardening aspect of
it and keeping the dome well maintained uh is important as well so i encourage you to look up urban
growers collective as well uh this is a great organization great yeah thanks for that limb
well listen i know i know we’re going to head over here in a few minutes to visit the high school
all right where they’re building the dome and we get to see some of the construction and action
and then uh after that we’ll visit with the founders uh udgar and puja downtown at the community
space there um but uh before we take off to go do that limb um is there anything else you’d like
to to say or share with our audience yeah on that regard i’m just so thankful that you guys took
the time to come down here to pagosine pose the long drives uh to come down here but this is where
the company was built um we want to remain active in this community like i said we’re donating
food to the food hubs we actively support the geothermal park project uh through in kind donations
and helping to maintain those three domes and udgar and puja really built a strong foundation
right here in pagosis springs and to have the manufacturing of the domes local here to build the
higher local resources we we buy mostly us uh components um and to have a us based
Colorado based manufacturing facility is just incredible especially here in pagosis springs and
what they’ve done in the small community is really built a national brand an international brand
right here in small town pagosis so as we grow the business internationally uh we’re also trying
to keep a very strong footprint right here in pagosis and that’s what i wanted to show you today as well
both at the high school and the geothermal project oh that’s great well thanks so much lemon it’s
wonderful visiting with you and sharing all of this with our audience great yeah no thank you again
for coming down okay so we’ll go visit a couple sites come on everybody so here we are at
pagosis high school with principal shawano donnell hello hey shawano how you doing doing great thank you
great thanks for visiting with with lemon me and telling us a bit about the uh the project you got
going on here you’re welcome glad to and uh lemon i know you you probably can kind of guide us
through the discussion here a little bit with what’s going on yeah now we’ve been working on this
project with pagosis high for a couple of years now it’s right in our hometown so we were always
really excited about it but what we’re more excited about is when it’s completed and what it’s
actually going to be used for so shawano tell us a little bit of how you’re going to use this
dome for your your vocational programs you bet so we um we’re fortunate to have a kind of a
small six-foot dome that we have here on the property and and we’ve been using it with our
ag programs they’ve been you know growing growing growing a few things in there um they do have some
hydroponics going so they’ve been fiddling with that a little bit and growing some tilapia and
into the season trying to find people to buy the tilapia or whatever but um but the time came
that we just come out growing that you know we’ve um got more demand from kids wanting to take more
agriculture classes and then we’re actually this year adding a horticulture class um but
hard to do horticulture in in our climate you know if you really want to grow anything year round so
this obviously presented itself as the the right facility to do that so um we’re excited about
opportunities that it’s going to provide our kids yeah what’s great about school domes is the
fact that the growing season here in Colorado is in the summer when kids are out of school yeah
so it’s so nice to have a year-round environment where you can teach kids horticulture in the middle
in the middle of winter absolutely yeah and then we’ve also got um our science teachers are a
little bit uh anxious to get in there also provides my opportunities besting your biology classes
and things like that to uh do some experimentation that you you really can’t do in a regular classroom
so um don’t know what those are going to be yet but i really feel like sky’s the limit on
on the opportunities to to use this facility to to expand um just opportunities for the kids
yeah so it’s so great to give them the the hands-on experience to accompany a lot of the theoretical
science that they’re learning out the books and so on absolutely it’s one thing to
see it on a video so all that other thing to actually pull it off in life and and uh
mean so much more so yeah or it’s it’s it’s a good deal for us you have some local chefs working
on the project as well right but we do teaching culinary arts as well as using it for the local
restaurants we do yeah for sure are we we’re very fortunate with Todd Stevens being our
director of our food service program he’s got some plans um you know he he helps us
that our culinary arts program um we’ve got some plans in there also to do some farm to table type
things so as that culinary arts program expands a lot of the kids kind of grow to grow their food
and that could be a um a collaboration between classes even you know the horticulture class maybe
growing some things culinary class in there and then actually harvest take that into the kitchen
and and make food out of it um and then you know i know Todd that has some ideas to do some farm to
table stuff even for the just the general food service program so um like it says on the infant
stages but i feel like sky’s the limit it’s it’s so cool from my perspective to see that you guys
have developed such a strong vocational training program here and i know talking with some other
educators and other parts of the state or even around the country that uh in many places
students don’t have those same kinds of opportunities and uh it’s it’s great you’re giving them
uh again that hands-on uh training opportunity yeah absolutely i appreciate you saying that i
a big believer in it and the vocational trades and all those all those different fields and
and giving kids those opportunities um you know i personally i’d like to um you know we try to be
mindful of our own local community and for those kids that maybe don’t want to go to college
um if we can give them some skills and some hands-on stuff while they’re in high school
that maybe they can get into those entry-level things in our community and establish themselves
but that comes from having programs you know like our ag programs the our building trades all the
different kinds of programs we’ve been adding here lately um it’s it’s it’s crucial to have those
programs for those kids yeah yeah i know we’re excited about it because yeah here are going
spaces like i said you’re in our backyard so we’re excited to be able to hire some kids out of that
program we’re sure done with it both from the construction of the domes as you can see
as well as the the gardening and the culinary aspects of it yeah for our own for our own purposes
well it’s great we’re standing here and behind us is a live build going on of the dome itself and
we can see the fellows are putting up some of the timbers there and lemma is wondering if maybe
you’d just explain real quick what we’re seeing here in the process yeah absolutely we’re actually
on the first day of the build so you can see it’s going up relatively quickly one unique thing about
this dome is the stem wall is made out of concrete so but guys that but goes to high one at the
concrete stem wall so that was here when we got here and then we anchor bolt into that and then
start on the dome build and we’re just going to go up with the struts in a spiral until we get to
the top and then after that we’ll put it on the polycarbonate glazing uh this whole build will
probably take us about five days with three crew members uh so it really goes up real quick and then
because it can start working on the beds inside and and the build out of the dome itself
yeah that’s great that really is a quick build yeah that’s impressive well great well uh just
want to again thank you uh principal Sean how do they call you principal donald i suppose the
kids can probably call you it’s it’s mostly mr. oh mr. oh all right mr. that’s the
difficult well some of them can get colorful in our language and they don’t always
fill my name might or say my name right but mr. oh typically uh-huh yeah well appreciate you
taking the time to visit with us thank you so yeah thank you appreciate it okay so we are now
in the educational dome in downtown pagosa with udgar and puja Parsons hey guys how are you doing
good so thank you it’s wonderful to be with you both and you are the founders of growing spaces
so in many respects what we’re experiencing right now is the result of your work over i understand
a number of years and um 30 years almost 30 years wonderful and i know we have a common connection
back to the roaring fork valley where our friends at sustainable settings and other amazing projects
are doing wonderful work as well and here we are a few hours away by car and it’s just
lovely to be in this space with uh this trellis with all of these grapes growing and figs behind
us and all kinds of beautiful foliage so i i want to ask you um upon your recent in retirement
what what is the feeling you have with the legacy that you’ve been able to help
create for pagosa and for folks using the domes in places all around the continent
puja maybe you could answer that well the fact that growing spaces is so busy right now
it’s just incredible to us because you know it was a slow start it took many years but
just our whole idea of living a healthy lifestyle and teaching people about natural systems
is happening it’s like we were before our time just like John Denver and Buckminster Fuller who
helped to begin it and now is our time this is the time when all of us need to take a break take a
pause and learn about all the kinds of things that you’re interviewing people about yeah absolutely
gives me i know a lot of hope and it seems that people really are mobilizing in a lot of different
ways yeah yes now i think for me the exciting part was when i first went into the big dome at
Windsor 50 foot dome in the middle of November and there was plants just growing like
crazy and it was like going from Alaska to Florida in one step and i was so inspired back then
i’ve got to make these available to people because you can grow year-round in the rocky mountains with
no heater and that’s unheard of everybody shut down the garden after the first frost in September
and that’s it till may way may may not get a frost again but with the growing dome you know you
can grow all year round without a beat so that’s what excited me and using no fossil fuel energy
these are net zero greenhouses and in this day and age when we’re all aware of climate change
and the effects of burning fossil fuels and i climate it’s really really important that we do
whatever we can do in whatever way we can do it to cut down our use of fossil fuel energy so
yeah ugar absolutely and i know you’re you’re telling me just before we started filming about your
own grow dome at home that you’ve had a number of years and you’ve only had to heat it a few days
out of all that time one week in 22 years when it was cloudy for a whole week there was no sun
and then it went down to 25 below and i was starting to get a little bit of eyes on the pond so
i thought okay i’ll heat it but the rest of the time it’s grown all winter along with no heater
whatsoever just the natural systems of the dome that work together to create the year-round growing
situation yeah absolutely beautiful and i know uh puja here we are again downtown pagosa and there
are three domes clustered together can you tell us a bit about what’s going on right here with
this project well the excitement here is the use of the geothermal heat and that’s an addition to
the normal growing domes but we have three different kinds of growing domes this is the education
dome started about three years ago which is why it’s really coming into fruition about two years
or a year and a half ago we started the community dome over there and some of the people that were
outside in the community garden by the river have moved inside and we’re all contributing now to
the food banks and then the newest will be the innovation dome and that’s not quite ready yet
so i’m going to save that as a surprise but you can go to the geothermal greenhouse partnership
or pagosa green dot log for more information oh beautiful and we’ll be sure to have those
links in the show notes just for some additional information for folks it’s pretty exciting to have
three big growing domes right downtown right by the river it’s just amazing it’s beautiful and as
we walked up there are all kinds of folks milling about and checking things out it’s such a great
distraction yeah and a beautiful thing is you don’t really need the geothermal energy to have a
growing dom that will grow year round any community could do this and there are different communities
and a lot of schools throughout the country that have chosen a growing dome to demonstrate
year round growing and children growing their own food and seeing from a seed to a plant to harvest
see the natural cycles of nature i think it’s wonderful for kids to be able to do that yes absolutely
it’s it’s such an important part of the the education for our youngsters and it’s it’s to me
incredibly encouraging to see school programs all around the country incorporating this kind of
experience and hands-on opportunity for for students all over the place and you know speaking
of all over the place i know you guys have helped get domes in all kinds of different communities and
i don’t know how many how many domes has growing spaces provided the world up to this point well
we have domes in 14 countries as far up here as New Zealand and South Africa got quite a few in
Europe Canada and so on so i never i’d actually lost count so i couldn’t really answer that question
but quite a lot yeah and the fun thing was we started in the rowing foot valley and it didn’t
really take off there but when we came here within the first five years we had a hundred
going domes in Pagosa Springs which was pretty interesting yeah yeah yeah started to take off
like hotcakes or something huh as they say well i’m just wondering you know you both have been
pioneers in this stewardship and sustainability movement and we’ve been talking about climate action
we’ve been talking about soil regeneration and you know we’ve got a very diverse audience
through the YonEarth community network and i’m wondering if you might share a few words of
of wisdom or encouragement or inspiration with folks coming from all kinds of backgrounds and
ages and geographical locations uh about living in these times that we’re living in puja maybe
may i ask you that first yeah for me um i was telling you that i felt like the people you’re
interviewing are were many of them before their time and i definitely know that john dendron
buckminster fuller were before their time and all the people that we knew in those days in the 80s
but as i as i watch the interviews and as i listen with excitement about you talking about dirt
and how important it is and where and where that all starts and that you’re connecting the dots
all the way up to good health for both the body and for the body of the planet there’s a sense that
this is our time you know that covid sort of gave us a pause so we could sort of reset maybe
and because of the looming mortality involved you know we’re really having to be serious about
looking at what we’ve done to the health of the planet or to even our interconnectedness you know
it’s a it’s a unifying moment really and so i don’t know it feels like the work we did
is carrying carrying on that vision that’s been living in a lot of different people
a community of people across the world like you you know and now you’re educating and people
are living it and there’s more a sense of talking the walk rather than walking the talk
and that that really is what we wanted to do with our business because we wanted to prove with
the business that if it’s a conscious business then you’re you’re living in harmony with nature
and you’re pointing to the interconnectedness of things and educating people and helping each
other there’s a natural way that it all works and it doesn’t have to be in compartments that are
separated out it can also show how the planet works you know how nature works nature is interconnected
it flows you know so we always just wanted to get people into their gardens
and help them become healthy again and in a microscopic way they would have that macroscopic view
by just experiencing that and caring about what they eat and loving the taste of it
yeah yeah you know it um you’re speaking to one of my favorite topics which is the transition
to regenerative economics from extractive economics and that we can not only build businesses that
are good for other people but we can thrive with businesses that are helping others to thrive
absolutely and that is the way nature works it’s regenerative we we have a super abundant
planet that we share and it’s time to get our economics in line with that reality
we wanted to be a part of that you know we didn’t know how to be business people because he was
a dentist and I was a therapist but we knew about nutrition because we’d helped our own bodies
and we’d healed ourselves and we’d helped our clients and so learning to be um business people
was so that we could prove that this is a money-making thing this is something that the economy could
be based on these kinds of values we had to lead with our values you know yeah absolutely I
love it and maybe you’re hearing in the background some of the sprinklers are coming on I
I think Lem who’s off camera might be getting wet but we’re not sure can’t tell exactly
a little chuckle anyway so uh so Udgar I want to just pose the same question to you if
if you have any words of inspiration or wisdom to share with our audience in these times it
would be wonderful to hear that yeah I think for me knowledge is power and there’s so much knowledge
available on the internet people celebrating what they’ve done whatever you want to learn about
it’s there it’s available it’s an incredible time but these are not closely held secrets anymore
and so I just encourage people whatever excites you whatever you feel attracted to go for it because
there’s a huge amount of support you know not only on the internet but with friends and community
I think community is also very important these days of living in isolation in a cave in the
Himalayas that’s nowhere it is anymore type we need to connect and we need to be in the community
and share with each other our excitement and our wisdom so those that’s what I would say yeah
absolutely beautiful thank you very much well I’m so grateful we have the opportunity to
visit with you all and to share a bit of this time uh out with our audience and uh before we sign
off is there anything else you’d like to say I’m grateful for your work and I’m grateful for
Lem’s work that your generation and your children are just doing it we’re so grateful to you
thank you thank you and I would just say ever onward yeah indeed all right well thank you so much
sure bye everybody the YonEarth community stewardship and sustainability podcast
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