Are You Prepared? On Hurricanes and Windproof Boundary Fencing

Header image: Suited up to simulate the conditions of working outside on Mars. Jonathan Clarke (the author, left) with visiting engineer Michael Curtis-Rouse, from UK Space Agency (right). Jonathan Clarke personal collection, Author provided.

Alison Tindale tells explains everything you need to know about Chinese artichokes!

Header image: Chimpanzee Ham with Trainers. Image credit: NASA

You might recall that one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to read one of my unread books every month this year, and to decide whether each one keeps its place on the shelf, or needs to be turned loose to find a new owner. In January I read The Gardener’s Year by Karel Čapek. February’s book was Minding my Peas and Cucumbers, by Kay Sexton – quirky tales of allotment life, it says on the cover. According to my notes it has been on the shelf, unread, since 2011.

Header image: Brooke Lark/Unsplash

Patrick Major, University of Reading and Chris Scott, University of Reading

2017 is the 100th anniversary of the start of the Cottingley fairies story, a hoax which entrances the UK to this day. Cousins Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright faked photos of fairies at the bottom of the garden, intended to be a practical joke on their grown-ups. When Elsie’s mother showed the photos to the local Theosophical Society, she set in motion a chain of events that led Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to declare the photographs to be authentic. He wrote an article on fairy life for The Strand magazine in November 1920, and fairy fever gripped the nation. Conan Doyle later wrote a book on the subject, The Coming of the Fairies – The Cottingley Incident.

If you’re keeping track of the news to see how Brexit is progressing, then the only possible answer (whatever your political persuasion) is… not well. MPs have vetoed the PM’s deal (again), the Speaker has vetoed her plan to make them vote on it again, the PM has been forced to ask the EU for an extension, and the French PM has said he won’t agree to one. With 9 days to go, we still don’t know what’s happening, and whether we will crash out of the EU without a deal (even though Parliament voted that wasn’t what they wanted).

Header image: Melburnians admire the first primrose to arrive in the colony, transported by a Wardian case, in Edward Hopley’s A Primrose from England, circa 1855. [Bendigo Art Gallery, Gift of Mr and Mrs Leonard Lansell 1964]

In this episode, Emma the Space Gardener talks to Mission Specialist Susan Young. Susan’s new book, “Growing Beans: A Diet for Healthy People and Planet” aims to get us to look beyond green beans, as growing and eating shelled beans – fresh and dried – has numerous benefits for us and our home planet. 

On 31 January 1971, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell and Stuart Roosa launched on their Apollo 14 mission to the Moon. While Shepard and Mitchell walked on the Moon, Roosa stayed in orbit, taking photographs and performing experiments. Tucked away in his personal belongings were 500 tree seeds, which orbited the Moon 34 times.

In August this year, I talked about a new experiment that ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet was about to start on International Space Station (ISS). “Graines d’Eklo” involved a specially-designed growing capsule, containing its own light source and a growing medium made of coir (coconut fibre) and vermiculite with a slow-release fertiliser.