Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma explores some exciting interplanetary plant news and talks about two projects growing in the Orbital Garden – heritage hydroponics and space chiles.
For the first show of 2021, Emma the Space Gardener is finding it hard to concentrate in the midst of global turmoil. So the first Gardeners of the Galaxy episode of 2021, she focuses on what’s she’s growing in the Orbital Garden and some exciting space plants news.
You can read more about Emma’s heritage hydroponics project, and Hellboy the space chile on the blog.
And from outer space, we hear about astronauts munching space radishes, the next batch of plants growing in Veggie, and Chinese seeds that have been to the Moon and back.
Gardeners of the Galaxy: episode 14 script
Hello and welcome to episode fourteen of Gardeners of the Galaxy, a podcast for all of the sentient beings in the Universe who have a passion for plants. I am Emma the Space Gardener, and I will be your host as we explore gardening on Earth… and beyond!
This is the first episode for 2021, and I’m recording it from Lockdown Britain. Mutant Covid is rampaging across the country, and we’re all back in isolation like we’re living on a space station. Except that we don’t know how long our mission will be, we didn’t train for this, and Mission Control is staffed by nutters.
Since the last show, we have Brexited from the European Union, and one consequence of that is that it’s now impossible for UK companies to export seeds to European countries (and Northern Ireland), and harder to import them as well. Hopefully that will all sort itself out in due course, but in the meantime, let’s focus on sending plants into
The website greengrove.cc is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.
For my Masters dissertation last year I did some research into gardeners who choose to grow unusual edible crops. I settled on two species to investigate, achocha and oca. In the past I’ve written about how to grow achocha – it’s a nice, easy plant and in a temperate climate you should have no problems getting a significant yield. You may have more of a problem dealing with the glut….
Mrs Green has set herself a new challenge this spring – she’s aiming to grow her own luffa (or loofah) to use as zero waste pan scrubbers. Never one to shy away from new plant experiences, I’m going to join her!
Grafting is a time-honoured technique for growing fruit trees – it allows gardeners and farmers to choose both the variety of fruit they want to grow, and the rootstock they want to grow it on. You can even graft more than one variety of fruit onto one rootstock, giving you a ‘family’ tree that saves space and spreads the harvest time, or gives you both ‘cookers’ and ‘eaters’ from one tree. Grafting vegetables, on the other hand, is something relatively new that has burst onto the home gardening scene in the last few years. Last year T&M gave us the opportunity to grow the TomTato, a tomato plant grafted onto potato roots that grows both tomatoes and potatoes – catchily nicknamed the Ketchup ‘n’ fries plant. This year they have added a new dual-purpose plant to their range: the Egg & Chips plant grows both aubergines (AKA eggplant) and potatoes.
There can’t be a more iconic symbol of Halloween than a witch riding a broomstick. In olden times it wouldn’t have been a problem to wander out into the woodland and cut a stout pole and then find sticks to make the sweeping end, and then you’d have yourself a fine broom, or besom. I suspect most of them were used for more mundane purposes – they are jolly useful things to have to hand.
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.
It’s hard to imagine anyone being more excited about eating lettuce than the three astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were yesterday, when they tucked into the first leaves of space-grown lettuce they’ve been allowed to eat. Despite having to sanitise the leaves first, with citric-acid-based, food-safe, antibacterial wipes (yummy!), they broke out the oil and vinegar and tucked in with gusto. They even thanked Mission Control and the scientists for giving them the opportunity to take part in this payload mission, and saved some veggies for the Russian cosmonauts who were outside on a spacewalk at harvest time.
There’s nothing quite as British as a nice cup of tea, and sitting down for a good cuppa can certainly brighten up your day. A tea bush is unlikely to thrive in most UK gardens (although there are a couple of tea plantations) because of the climate, but there are plenty of herbs that are easy to grow and make a refreshing brew. They’ll even grow well in containers – so they make ideal plants for a windowbox or a patio. Having them close at hand means you can harvest leaves as and when you need them.
If you’ve ever wished you lived in a tropical climate, simply so that you could grow your own chocolate, then the future is looking bright. Last time I touched on this subject I mentioned plants that might add a chocolatey touch to your garden (with their colour, scent and even flavour).
Pea shoots are an oriental delicacy, regularly grown in gardens across China, but rarely seen for sale here in the UK because they’re very expensive for their weight. Cheap and easy to grow, pea shoots are an ideal candidate for growing in a kitchen garden because you’ll be getting a lot of value for your money and your space – even if all you have is a windowsill or a small container garden.
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.
If we look out of our patio windows at dusk, we are sometimes lucky enough to spot a bat zooming around above the houses. We call it Cricket, although – to be fair – Cricket could be multiple individuals. It flies so fast it’s hard to keep track. In Feral, George Monbiot talks about the wonder we feel when we come face to face with wildlife like this. He feels it’s a transformative experience, and one that is now sadly lacking from our daily lives.