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 - 11:37 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty
Header image: SINTEF researcher Galina Simonsen with hydroponic plants at the CIRiS/NTNU Social Research Centre in Trondheim. Image credit: Jana Pavlova
Researcher Galina Simonsen works at SINTEF, an independent research organisation based in Trondheim, Norway. She and her colleagues are part of an international project called LunarPlant, looking into growing plants on the Moon.
Agriculture is distinctly challenging in the air-free lunar environment, which can reach 200º during the day and drop to -183º at night. To make life harder, the lunar ‘soil’ is really regolith, a rocky powder not ideally suited to plant growth. Meeting these challenges will involve using the available resources to provide artificial environments and light and a replacement for fertile soil.
“You may already have heard of hydroponics. This is a method of growing plants in water, which is entirely possible if the water contains sufficient nutrients. The use of this method is essential to the success of this project.”
“Radar data indicates that the Moon’s polar regions hold more than 600 billion kilogrammes of ice. This is enough to fill about 240,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. It is much less than we have on Earth, but will be enough to enable humans to maintain some level of activity. The ice will be melted to form water which will be used to cultivate food plants.”
The LunarPlant project is based on a circular system of resource use, meaning that the fertiliser used on the Moon will come from the astronauts themselves.
Some gardeners will already be familiar with the term ‘liquid gold’, used to describe the use of urine as a fertiliser. However, urine is not generally recommended for use on plants for consumption, so one of the challenges for the
Header image: Mizuna lettuce growing aboard the International Space Station before being harvested and frozen for return to Earth. Image credit: NASA
BBC News has an interesting article this morning about scientists that have managed to grow marigolds in crushed moon rock. Apparently with the right combination of bacteria they can extract the nutrients they need from the rock. Which, in my mind, proves that organic gardening is the way to go – it’s the only method that preserves the soil ecosystem that plants obviously rely on to thrive.
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.
Buying plants
“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?
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.
Three minutes of loveliness