Christine Escobar on growing water plants in space: GotG11

Marigolds aren’t really in fashion at the moment – their simple flowers and brash colours don’t seem to fit in modern gardens. But they’re worth growing in a kitchen garden for two reasons. The first is that these simple flowers are the sort that bees and other beneficial insects love. And the second reason is that marigolds are known to be pest-repelling plants – good companions.

Fresh from wondering where my writing career is going, I thought it might be fun to revisit some of the places it has been. In 2007 I was just starting out as a freelance writer, having been made redundant from my job as a techie. I’d been blogging for several years, and was slowly getting published (and paid!) online and off.

Right now, 200 miles above your head, chilli peppers are growing on the International Space Station (ISS).

“Not only does Growing Vegetables is Fun! introduce children to a number of seeds and plants, but through containing a scrapbook and seed diary, also provides hours of educational fun!”

Good King Henry is a perennial herb in the family Chenopodiaceae – the same plant family as some familiar vegetables (including beetroot and chard), some familiar weeds (e.g. Fat Hen) and some other useful but more unusual plants – including quinoa and tree spinach.

Nasturtiums make a great addition to a kitchen garden, for several reasons. Firstly, they come in lots of hot, bright colours, and really cheer the place up when there’s a lot of green around. Secondly, they’re edible – you can add the leaves and flowers to salads (they have a peppery flavour, best used in moderation) and if you pickle the seeds you have a good substitute for capers. Thirdly, they act as sacrificial plants, drawing blackfly and other pests away from more valuable crops. And finally, they’re really easy to grow, to the point where after the first year they’re likely to grow themselves.

If you’ve just decided to grow your own vegetables to save money, then where do you start? A visit to the garden centre, or a quick flick through the seed catalogue, can be daunting – especially if you don’t have a lot of space for your vegetable patch. What’s going to give you the most bang for your buck?

Transpiration and evaporation

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.

The international children’s charity World Vision are currently helping communities in the Bolivian Andes to grow vegetables against the odds – fresh food would otherwise be in short supply and children in these communities suffer from malnutrition.

Is growing veg easy? There’s a big trend in the gardening media at the moment promoting growing your own vegetables as easy, or simple. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that, unless you promote something as ‘easy’, people aren’t going to try it. There’s a flip-side to that, of course; if you say something is easy and people try and fail, then they’re not going to want to try it again. Or maybe it’s just because the people writing the articles have been gardening for so long that everything they do has become routine.

I have pretty much always lived in areas with hard water, and with its knock-on effects – scale in the kettle, dried out skin and soap scum on everything. Using detergent-based toiletries has always made sense to me, because (with our water) they’re easier on the skin and they make less mess to clean up. I also have a bit of a thing about sharing soap bars with strangers; I think pump dispensers are more hygienic. (I haven’t investigated, I’m just happier with pump soap for guests!)