Astronauts Harvest Cabbage on the International Space Station

China Central Television has produced a short video showing the plant experiments growing on the Tiangong space station. The Shenzhou-16 crew has been in orbit for almost three months, and says their space vegetable garden has given a good lettuce harvest.

How does a kitchen gardener choose what to grow? It’s about balancing quite a complex set of variables, which include the space and time available, the local climate and soil, the gardener’s skill level and what they like to eat. That last one is, itself, quite a complicated topic as culture plays a significant role. There are many thousands of edible plants on the planet; most people only eat a small number and grow fewer still.

Astronaut Steven Swanson tending to the Veggie garden on the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA

Move over, Mark Watney, there’s a new space botanist heading for Mars! Ryan and I have just finished watching the new Netflix series Away, which follows (over 10 episodes) the quest of five international astronauts to be the first people to set foot on the red planet.

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.

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

Header image: NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio uses a video camera to photograph the Ant Forage Habitat. Image credit: NASA

In previous years, my garden plan has revolved around what I want to grow. There are a lot of unusual plants that grow, or might grow, in our climate, and I enjoy trying them out. With my experimental impulses mainly focused on the Hydroponicum, I have been thinking about what we would like to eat from the garden.

The lotus is a remarkable plant. I’m referring to Nelumbo nucifera, which is native to Asia and sacred to both buddhists and Hindus. (It’s related to the American lotus, N. lutea, but not to the lotus that appears in ancient Egyptian images – that’s Nymphaea lotus. Plants in the Nymphaea genus are more commonly referred to as waterlillies in the UK.)

The political weather has been stormy of late, and as the sun has come out to play at last, the garden seems the safest place to be. There’s a lot to be done to get it ready for the growing season, so time spent outside is never wasted. A lot of what I’m doing at the moment could best be termed ungardening, clearing out the contents from last year’s containers, and reusing the potting compost in the bottom of new pots, or as a soil improving mulch.

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! Emma’s guest on this week’s show is Dr Gioia Massa, a Project Scientist at the NASA Kennedy Space Center, working on the Veggie growing system on the International Space Station. Gioia talks about the challenges of growing plants in space, those blooming space zinnias, and when we might see astronauts eating their first space tomato!

Last weekend, as the temperatures soared, I found a certain amount of solace in learning more about how plants are being grown in Antarctica – the coldest place on Earth.