Header image: Mizuna lettuce growing aboard the International Space Station before being harvested and frozen for return to Earth. Image credit: NASA
21.08.2023 - 11:55 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty
When Neil Armstrong made his giant leap for humankind in 45 years ago, he got covered in Moon dust. Throughout the Apollo missions, dust was an issue. Fine but rough, it caused problems with the space suits, and created mini dust storms in the cabin once the landers launched back into space.
On Earth, mineral soils are formed from the underlying rock by weathering, which is a collection of natural processes that gradually break down the rock. Weathering can be mechanical (through atmospheric conditions such as heat, water, ice and pressure) or chemical (when the surface rock reacts with water, oxygen or chemicals produced by plants). The rock particles then combine with organic matter to form what we know as soil.
On the Moon, that doesn’t happen. Lunar dust is formed from lunar rock (regolith) when small meteorites hit the Moon’s surface and pulverize the rock. Some of the rock melts and then cools, coating the dust with a glassy shell. There’s no organic matter for the dust to combine with. UV rays by day, and solar winds by night, create charged particles and give lunar dust ‘static cling’. Oh, and tiny specks of iron make it magnetic. So it’s not your run-of-the-mill Earth soil.
But would anything grow in it? The short answer is no – the minerals it contains are locked up in a form that plants can’t access. Whilst it might be possible to use Moon rock as a ‘substrate’ for hydroponic growing (essentially there merely to hold the plants up), all of their nutrients would have to be supplied with a fertilizer.
But that’s not the final word on the subject. NASA did some plant experiments with Moon rock at the time of the Apollo missions (mainly as part of their quarantine procedures to make sure they hadn’t imported health
Header image: Mizuna lettuce growing aboard the International Space Station before being harvested and frozen for return to Earth. Image credit: NASA
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!”
Today is the first day of National Plants at Work Week, which aims to promote the use and benefits of indoor plants. You may have been eyeing up the windowsills in your office with a view to growing your own chillies or sweet peppers, but did you know that you can grow your own fresh air too?
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?
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.