Meals on Mars: The Space Spice Machine

Header image: Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage leaves prior to harvest aboard the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for some statistics about the average UK garden size, and I found some interesting ones. According to the 2015 media pack for the RHS The Garden magazine, a document that is aimed at attracting advertisers to the publication, the 380,000 RHS members the magazine is sent to have gardens that are 10 times larger than the UK average, covering over half an acre.

Last month, writing on the topic of blackberries for Lubera, I made the observation that the British don’t have a tradition of foraging. It made me wonder again when and why we lost it (which I started wondering when I was writing about Sea buckthorn on FB for Lubera). So far I haven’t found a definitive answer – ethnobotanists spend a lot of time exploring the reasons for loss of traditional/indigenous knowledge about plant use, but generally focus on societies where it is being lost now, and where there is hope of conserving it.

Move over, Mark Watney, there’s a new space botanist heading for Mars! Ryan and I have just finished watching the new Netflix series Away, which follows (over 10 episodes) the quest of five international astronauts to be the first people to set foot on the red planet.

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 idea that we should be gardening without using peat is not a new one, at least here in the UK. I have a copy of ‘Gardening Without Peat’, published by Friends of the Earth in 1991. It explains that our exploitation of peat bogs is using up peat faster than it is being formed – we should consider it a non-renewable resource. The destruction of the peat bogs is causing a decline in biodiversity and allowing carbon dioxide to escape into the atmosphere to add to our climate woes.

A little while ago, I told you about a preliminary experiment that Dr Wieger Wamelink and his team at the University of Wageningen conducted. It demonstrated that it is possible to grow plants in simulated Mars and Moon soils. 

Just over 3 weeks ago, I started the AeroGarden on its latest mission – rooting herb cuttings. Unsurprisingly, the mint was the first plant to take root, which it did in under a week.

Just over a year ago, when we were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I talked about the lack of diversity in space and mentioned Mary Jackson. In 2016, the movie Hidden Figures shared the stories of Mary Jackson and two other Black female mathematicians – Katherine Johnson and, Dorothy Vaughan. They worked at NASA when a ‘computer’ still meant a person carrying out mathematical calculations. The film is based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly, which I am reading at the moment. The book offers a more detailed and accurate account of the prejudice these women (and others) had to overcome.

Can we grow food on the Moon or Mars? That was the question that started Dr Wieger Wamelink, ecologist and exobiologist at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, on a research quest in 2013.

Gardeners of the Galaxy has completed its first solar orbit! Join Emma the Space Gardener for a birthday celebration and learn how GotG got started, hear the story of a space plants experiment you’ll never forget, and find out which plant Emma would choose to take into space.

In 2004, ESA challenged French chefs to come up with gourmet recipes for space travellers on Mars and other planets. They were limited by what could feasibly be grown on Mars, with extra ingredients (such as extra vegetables, herbs, oil, butter, seasonings and sugar) shipped from Earth.