Botany Ideas, Tips & Guides

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma recaps important spacecraft Arrivals and Departures and learns about growing nutrients and medicines in space. There’s a new plant experiment running on the International Space Station, and exciting news from ESA.

Botany should feature more heavily in the school curriculum, and be a greater focus of educational policy, a new study in the Journal of Biological Education says.

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma recaps the latest space plant news and then talks about some of the seeds with space stories.

Header image: Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage leaves prior to harvest aboard the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma talks to Grace Crain, a researcher on the MELiSSA project developing circular life support systems. 

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! Emma’s guest on this week’s show is Dr Karl Hasenstein, the Principal Investigator for the Plant Habitat-02 experiment, which is currently growing radishes on the International Space Station.

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma explores some exciting interplanetary plant news and talks about two projects growing in the Orbital Garden – heritage hydroponics and space chiles.

Today (May 20th) is Pick Strawberries Day in America. It’s a bit early in the UK – the strawberry season is only just beginning, ramping up to be ready for Wimbledon in June.

Over the past few years, experiments in the Veggie growing system have proved that astronauts can grow edible plants on the International Space Station. 

Emma the Space Gardener is back with a round-up of recent space gardening news. Exciting stuff has been happening on the ISS, where green-fingered space gardener Mike Hopkins has been pricking out seedlings and harvesting crops from Veggie.

Header image: Annika Geijer-Simpson, Author provided

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! Emma’s guest on this week’s show is Michael Wilkinson, a teacher who’s bringing astrobotany into classrooms with Magnitude.io. Michael talks about the ExoLab series of experiments, which ‘leguminaut’ is blasting off in 2021, and how a Bitmoji teacher will be able to tag along for the ride!

The December edition of the Space Boffins podcast is here, and it features me talking about space plants!

Aquaculture is farming in water. Can we do that in space? Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond!

Header image: Lettuce cultivated in a sealed bag (Left: before harvesting; Right: before collecting on the ground). Image credit: Takanaka Corporation

Four new plant experiments launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on the SpaceX CRS-24 cargo mission: APEX-07, MVP-Plant-01, Plant Habitat-05 and Veggie PONDS-03R.

NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement has just announced more details about the tree seeds they’ve packed into the Orion capsule for the upcoming Artemis I launch. They’re partnering with the USDA Forest Service in a STEM education project that sends a “new generation” of Moon Tree seeds to lunar orbit and connects Artemis I programming to Earth science, data literacy and citizen science orbit.

Header image: Prof Shuo Wang/Shi et al., 2022, Author provided

Gregory Moore, The University of Melbourne

It’s time for another exciting podcast episode, and in this I’m talking with Dr Emily Sessa, the director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden. Now Emily’s job might just be one of the coolest in the Universe, but she has also recently been working on some NASA-funded research that could tell us a lot about the history of life on planet Earth, but also give us some hints about how to live well on other planets.