Dear diary: the Sun never set on the Arctic Mars simulation

Header image: Lupinus albus (altramuces o chochitos), by Calapito via Wikimedia Commons.

Evening is the best time to relax after a routine day’s work. Besides relaxing in the garden, you can do productive and interesting tasks that will result in a beautiful place to relish a great cup of coffee. So, if you are thinking about What to do in  Garden in the Evening, have a look at the following innovative pointers below!

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.

The Pantry contains information about some of the items that are useful for a peat-free gardener, and gardening terms you may come across on your peat-free travels.

This is our garden plan for the front garden and the ‘back’ garden (which is at the side of the house, strictly speaking). The red areas are paving – a garden path, a wide patio and enough hardstanding to go underneath two sheds (one of which may turn out to be a greenhouse).

I’m hoping to go and see The Martian soon, one of the few films to feature a botanist as the hero. Astronaut Mark Watney is one of the first humans to set foot on Mars, but accidentally gets left behind and has to survive on his own – and to do so he grows potatoes. He wouldn’t be the first person (or even population) to rely on potatoes for survival, but here on Earth there’s a slight snag. The potato (Solanum tuberosum) has an arch nemesis – late blight, caused by an organism called Phytophthora infestans. It cuts down both potatoes and tomatoes, and was the biological cause of the Irish Potato Famine in the 19th century.

Michael Dixon, University of Guelph

Header image: Ella and Nicki at the Mars Desert Research Station. Provided by the author.

Can we grow food on the Moon or Mars? That was the question that started Dr Wieger Wamelink, ecologist and exobiologist at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, on a research quest in 2013.

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. 

A standard mission to the International Space Station is six months long. About nine months before launch, each astronaut tastes the 200 or so items on NASA’s space menu and chooses what they want to be sent into space for them. Nutritionists weigh in to make sure they get the nutrients they need, and astronauts can take some ‘bonus’ treats with them. These can be off-the-shelf foods, and astronauts from different nationalities often have special space meals prepared for them. (Tim Peake got a bacon sandwich, beef stew with truffles and sausages and mash, courtesy of Heston Blumenthal.)

A year ago, the first seeds sprouted on the Moon. China’s Chang’e-4 mission was the first to land on the far side of the Moon, which faces away from Earth. The lander carried a sealed container filled with soil, cotton, rapeseed, Arabidopsis (rock cress) and potato seeds, yeast and fruit fly eggs. The aim of the experiment was to form an artificial, self-sustaining environment – a mini biosphere. The six components were chosen to act “producers, consumers and decomposers”, with the plants producing oxygen and food to sustain the fruit flies. The yeast was to process waste from the flies the dead plants to create more insect food.