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21.08.2023 - 11:51 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty
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.
I’ve known for years that there were greenhouses in Antartica, supplying isolated crews with a few fresh vegetables, and a splash of colour and humidity in an otherwise white world. The one I was most familiar with – at the American McMurdo Station – opened in 1989 and closed in 2011.
America also has the South Pole Food Growth Chamber (SPFGC), which was assembled and extensively tested at the University of Arizona before being shipped to the South Pole. It was installed in Antarctica in 2004 and is still in use today. It has been used to grow a wide variety of crops including lettuces, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, melons and peppers.
I was curious as to how many greenhouses were in active use in Antarctica, and I found out that in 2015 there were nine. As well as the SPFGC, there were greenhouses at Casey, Davis, Mawson (Australia), Great Wall (China), Syowa (Japan), King Sejong, Jang Bogo (South Korea), and Scott Base (New Zealand).
The UK isn’t on that list. The British Antarctic Survey operates three research stations in Antarctica. Rothera Research Station is the largest, and there’s also the Halley VI Research Station and Signy Research station (which is only operated during the summer). The original plans for the Halley VI base included a hydroponic greenhouse, but it was never built. In fact, it appears that the British haven’t been growing any plants in Antarctica since the 1970s.
The first plants deliberately grown in Antarctica sprung up during the Discovery Expedition, officially known as the British National Antarctic Expedition, from 1901–04.
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The garden and I have not spent much time together this summer. I’ve been busy… there was weather… there have been too many days when I didn’t feel like going outside. Since the courgette and summer squash started fruiting, I’ve been a bit afraid to go outside in case there’s a mountain of fruit to pick. But the light was nice this morning, so I ventured outside to take a few photos (and the squashes seem to be slowing down, so it’s safe).
An ideal seed compost is able to retain water, whilst at the same time letting excess water drain away to provide an environment that is damp but not waterlogged. It allows penetration of plant roots and is able to anchor plants, but has space for air. Its texture is consistent, and it is free from pests, diseases and weeds that would compete with the seedlings. As we have seen, it doesn’t need to contain many nutrients if seedlings are going to be pricked out; seedlings growing in modules will either need enough nutrients in the compost to support them through their first weeks of life, or suitable supplementary feeding.
Every month this year I’ve been trying to read one of the unread books on my shelf, and to then decide whether it gets to keep its spot or needs to be set free to find a new home. For June I chose Nature’s Wild Harvest by Eric Soothill and Michael J. Thomas. It was published in 1983, and has been sitting on my bookshelf for three years, since I bought it in our local secondhand bookshop (which only opens on Wednesdays).
Yesterday I read that Trump adviser Myron Ebell, a climate change denier, thinks that the green movement is the greatest threat to freedom.
The Body Shop has announced that it is creating its first show garden at RHS Chelsea this year. It’s called The Lady Garden, designed to pay homage to its “founding feminist principles and activist roots”.
Many years ago, long before my gardening obsession began, I spent a season or two living in a ground floor flat in Newbury that had patio doors that opened onto a backwater. Shortly after moving in we made friends with the local duck population, to the point where we bought poultry corn from the pet stall on the market for them – bread not being the best food for ducks.
The English obsession with grass came into being in the 17th century, when the close cut lawn was a status symbol of the rich. Only they could afford to take land out of production for purely aesthetic purposes, and maintaining a lawn before the invention of the mower was a highly skilled and labour-intensive process. The middle classes started growing lawns from the 1860s onwards, and the Victorian popularity for outdoor sports led to their proliferation. Grass species from the Old World were taken to America during this period, and the lawn took there over in the early 20th century. In 2005, NASA published research suggesting that lawns (including residential and commercial lawns and golf courses) were the single largest irrigated ‘crop’ in America, covering about 128,000 square kilometres. In 2013 there were upwards of 15 millions lawns in Britain, costing us £54 million in fertilisers and £127 million on lawn mowers.
If you’re currently tending lettuce plants, then you have something in common with the crew on board the International Space Station (ISS). They’re testing NASA’s new Vegetable Production System – affectionately known as ‘Veggie’. At 11.5 inches by 14.5 inches, Veggie is the largest plant growth chamber to have been blasted into space, and was developed by Orbital Technologies Corp.
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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.
I imagine the Apollo 11 astronauts had plenty to do while they were hurtling towards the Moon, but from a bystander’s perspective it was probably pretty dull stuff. Still, it’s Day 3 of the mission, so let’s have a look at what they’ve got stashed away in their space age picnic basket.