Growing for Change competition

Header image: Mizuna lettuce growing aboard the International Space Station before being harvested and frozen for return to Earth. Image credit: NASA 

Yesterday I read that Trump adviser Myron Ebell, a climate change denier, thinks that the green movement is the greatest threat to freedom.

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.

This is a really fun video (12:24 long) from Adam Savage’s Tested series, in which a chef tries to help astronauts on the ISS eat nicer meals by combining foods they already have in stock. Chris Hadfield is their astronaut guinea pig, and demonstrates very effectively why it’s so hard to prepare meals in space!

Buying plants

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?

The problem with elections, with votes of any kind, is that the process is inherently divisive. Whatever the result, there are winners and losers. The majority picks the direction we will take, for a little while, and everyone else just has to make the best of it. Given human nature, it seems like there’s a constant battle between tradition and progress. We’re all voting for a better world, we just disagree about what that means.