Basia Dominas is a member of the Organic Gardner Podcast Facebook group and does she drop some Golden Seeds today!!! I know this is going to be one of the most inspiring interviews I have done!

I will try to get full show notes updated ASAP!!! 

So if you’re listening Basia and I just jumped right in and I thought it was all gold so I kept the skype call ring and everything… silly me, sometimes I can get a little carried away with not wanting to leave anything out! Hope you enjoy something a little different!

My name is Barbara but you can call me Basha…

How’s your day going?

It’s finally raining, I’m rejoicing because my prayers for Rain have been answered… We’re in a terrible drought, historic record drought for June and July, my garden is like dying. We have water bans… it’s tough you can’t use soaker hoses, but nobody’s gonna see it… we have restrictions with water, and I’m like running back and forth with hoses…  the sun is like 95º everyday and everything is wilting…. The heat is so extreme… but it’s raining so I’m happy… 

Crazy, I had no idea, I knew it was super hot in NY this week, but I didn’t realize Boston is experiencing a drought…

But compared to California we can’t talk about drought really … we’re getting less rain then average, yeah, everybody’s lawn is dead basically, I live just south of Boston everybody’s lawn is yellow… if you look up at the trees are showing heat stress, some trees are dropping leaves… it’s tough… we’re supposed to be getting 3” a downpour… so I’m sitting next to my window hoping… come on rain…

How are you doing? So you are getting interviewed today?

Hopefully… I have a job interview and hopefully I’m interviewing Elizabeth Kucinich today? She is the producer of OMG GMO, and also Hot Cities… it sounds like Boston is a hot city… her husband Dennis Kucinich ran for President a few years ago, that’s how I found out about her and why I follow her… I tried to get her on before and she was gonna and she rescheduled… then the principal called me and said can you do an interview at the exact same time? so we have been emailing back and forth the three of us???

Im just hear digging holes in the ground?! 

Everybody who grows a garden…You’re just one of our futuristic visionaries, green future protector, I love your pictures on Facebook or your garden and flowers. Now do you have a nursery or a gardening business?

I’m a biology student at UMASS Boston, I do not have a business. It’s basically I have a victory garden, it’s just 25 by 75 feet I cover the entire space with flowers and vegetables! I do not have a business because it’s just too small, I’m too busy and my boyfriend works at a hospital and so we can’t put enough time into the garden to sell any of it. I just grow it for fun! We have a lot of vegetables that we consume and that we give to neighbors and friends and family. We don’t have a business and we don’t make a profit off of it! I just do it because I love!!!

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

So, the real, actually being responsible for a garden, was maybe 3 years ago, when we bought this house, we have very nice flat land, it’s just beautiful soil, the previous owner had a garden as he was getting older he couldn’t keep up with it anymore, so it was getting back to nature! It was covered in weeds that I’m still fighting to this day, and I will probably fight them forever and it was a good experience trying to get rid of crabgrass out of my garden! This is the first garden I am responsible for…

Ever since I could remember I always love being in nature and being outside and studying,

I always such a nature kid! I grew up in Poland in an urban area in a city but basically just a half hour bike ride away is all there’s farms and woods and lakes it’s sort of like a very beautiful region around Poznan, Poland, there was a national park nearby

with my parents

go for day trips and explore

go swimming in a lake or go biking in the woods! I loved it! I just soaked it all up. and when I went to school, and took biology classes I just soaked it all up! I’m like tofu when it comes to info about biology! You know teenagers have posters of boy bands you know, I have literally posters of  animals and plants all over my room and I had shelves filled with potted plants, I basically had my little greenhouse at age 11!

All these house plants that I really took care of, I loved it! So then I moved to America, I moved to Boston area when I was about 15. My parents also live in the suburbs, we got a house but their backyard is shaded so my mom never grew any vegetables so I helped her grow perennials, so that would be my first experience! But now I have my own garden so I’m still new!

I always say in the beginning people who are new those mistakes and challenges are fresher in your mind? What an interesting background do you have brothers and sisters?

No, I grew up as an only child. It was just me and my parents.o

With friends as soon as I went to school, I would run around into the woods

my friends house had this patch of woods nearby, in an urban area, it was like a park not just deep woods so we would play outside all day until we were called to dinner! WE had computers but we didn’t have internet, so we were growing up and we so we didn’t have all these games so that was our playground! I loved it and playing in the mud and climb trees! It was really cool growing up!

I think also that made me understand the relationships a little bit better because I was in nature all the time. I understand if you spray pesticide it’s going to affect all of these other insects not just the ones that you are going to kill…. I think it helped me to grow up outside and notice all of these relationships.

Sounds like a nice childhood and it sounds like you learned all you needed ot learn if you’re a biology student at UMASS Boston.

How did you learn how to garden organically?

I guess, I just put my hands in the dirt, trial and error, researched internet is really a great resource, even just google, there are so many amazing articles out there so if you just type in, how to grow tomatoes, you have to weed in because

everybody writes at this point, it’s amazing the amount of info that you can find!

My favorite resource for finding information if I have a questions, or if I am not sure how to grow something or do something is my local gardening Facebook group, everybody is in the same area, growing zone, it’s local, the amount of rainfall is the same, it’s just the region south of Boston, South Shore Gardening Buy Sell Trade Facebook Group, although

Organic Gardener Podcast Facebook Community!

people post pictures of what they grow to sort of show and share with everybody but if you have a questions like:

• what bug is this?
• why do my plants look like this?
• when do I plant peas?

And people answer immediately and people have such an amount of knowledge,

humbling to be able to ask

how I started with if I couldn’t find something online I would post a question I would get like 30 answers and it’s like you get support and encouragement to do it!  Because sometimes growing can be intimidating especially for beginners

great to have support from an online group of people who are nearby. Like you say, if you say your pictures are so beautiful but it makes you feel good inside!

I totally agree! It doesn’t have to do with gardening but Facebook, because this weekend I had this opportunity to go on a hike in Glacier Park because even though I live right here I don’t know a lot of people who want to hike and this woman took me and kept us safe and she’s been the like 10 times and it was just amazing and those connections you make in FB are amazing.

Tell us about something that grew well this year.

Something that has been growing well consistently is zucchini, and squash, yellow, summer squash, butternut, and this year I got heirloom seeds from a neighbor which is amazing! These are really doing well every single year! I have green zucchini coming out of my ears. I Literally tried to find recipes of what to do with it! I give it to my friends and family. We eat it every day and we always have some extra! Squash is doing well!

Tomatoes are doing well, we have squirrel problems… I have problems trying to deter squirrels, they just attack the tomatoes, as soon as their is a blush of color on the tomato they just pick it!

It’s amazing how such a little animal can pick such a big tomato! They leave it on top of my gate, so I can see it!

it’s like they can see it I get home from work

they are taunting me

in the South Shore Gardening Buy Sell Trade Facebook Group  People have suggested Irish spring soap

supposedly the critters don’t it might be helping

the tomatoes

would be munched on

Something that isn’t growing quite so well.

I just basically tried things like peppers and cauliflowers, and cauliflower didn’t do anything it just grew and died. So that did not work well for me so I’m not gonna grow that again.

I think

I put it in at the same time as the broccoli, because the brocoli grew fine? 

if the cauliflower, it didn’t grow next to it,

same exposure,

timing and

maybe is the seedlings I got, or I added something wrong, 

I did something wrong

you try, I’m not really crazy about cauliflower, ou know what I don’t like it that much

if it didn’t grow I’ll just take that as a sign, 

I was thinking maybe it was the seeds or plants that you got. That’s something people say a lot don’t waste time and energy on things you don’t love to eat anyway!

You know what the really important part, that you notice that you learn, really keep a journal. I’m guilty! I always think. Oh I’ll remember! But you don’t.

I’m so glad you said that because I always always always that and then the next week I’m like what?

In my area, there are a lot of people

literally neighbors walking by, so as I’m working in the garden, there will be neighbors strolling by, and they say hello! I always invite them over and I’m like “please show me what do I do with this, look at my garden or whatever…”

The same neighbor gave me the Hubbard seeds and gave me the plants… he’s such a wealth of information, he probably forgot more info then I’lll ever know in my lifetime… he’s so smart and experienced! It’s really cool when you have a question to talk to your own neighbors… it’s nice when you have your own garden how many connections you make. It’s almost like a conversation piece, you wouldn’t stop if they didn’t have a garden at somebody’s yard.

i

You make a connection and get to know that person

it helps me to make conversations with people who live near me! Some people, wer’re sort of a young couple in a well established neighborhood so for everybody is maybe a little bit older then us. So maybe we wouldn’t find ourselves in the same social situations. So sometimes you feel shy, you’re not gonna go knock on somebody’s door, but if people are just walking by or people are jogging or walking...