Yesterday I read that Trump adviser Myron Ebell, a climate change denier, thinks that the green movement is the greatest threat to freedom.
21.08.2023 - 11:45 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty / Join Emma
Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! Emma’s guest on this week’s show is Dr Karl Hasenstein, the Principal Investigator for the Plant Habitat-02 experiment, which is currently growing radishes on the International Space Station.
At this very moment, there are radishes growing on the International Space Station! They are growing in the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH), and in this week’s show we go behind-the-scenes with the Principal Investigator of the Plant Habitat-02 experiment, Dr Karl Hasenstein.
Karl mentions some of his previous work, which used High Gradient Magnetic Fields to study how plants respond to gravity. To find out more, take a look at these two published papers:
Kuznetsov, O.A., Hasenstein, K.H. Intracellular magnetophoresis of amyloplasts and induction of root curvature. Planta 198, 87–94 (1996). DOI:10.1007/BF00197590. Hasenstein, Karl H., et al. Analysis of magnetic gradients to study gravitropism. American journal of botany 100.1 (2013): 249-255. [Discover more of Karl’s publications.]
There’s also a NASA Science page from 2002: Sowing Seeds in a Magnetic Field.
Karl also mentions Proprioception, amyloplasts, hybrid tomato-potatoes, and his post doc Susan John.
A post shared by International Space Station (@iss)
If you’re enjoying Gardeners of the Galaxy, please take a moment to Like, Retweet or Share the link to grow our space gardener community! You can always leave a nice comment here, which gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. And you can also find me on Mastodon.
For those of you who are in a position to support the show financially, I have set up three support levels on Patreon. All tiers provide access to the same great benefits:
If you’d prefer to make a one-off
Yesterday I read that Trump adviser Myron Ebell, a climate change denier, thinks that the green movement is the greatest threat to freedom.
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.
Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma recaps the latest space plant news and then talks about some of the seeds with space stories.
I’m not a chemist, but I do find plant chemistry (and the links and patterns between different plants) to be a fascinating topic. Fortunately there are chemists out there who can bring these to our attention, and Compound Interest includes some great plant-related infographics amongst a wider spread of chemical topics.
While we’re waiting for Tim Peake to blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) to begin his Principia mission, I thought it might be fun to have a look at the first Briton in space – Helen Sharman, who was also the first woman to visit the Mir space station, in 1991.
One of the nerdy things I enjoy doing in my spare time is researching the first seeds to have made it into space. This is what I have found so far:
From the moment humans started to reach for the skies, we have used other species from Earth to test what’s safe and what happens to life away from its natural habitat on the planet’s surface.
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.
Header image: NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio uses a video camera to photograph the Ant Forage Habitat. Image credit: NASA
COP21, the United Nations conference on climate change, has ended with a ‘landmark’ agreement that climate change is something we all need to tackle together. Last week I was talking about what gardeners can do to reduce their carbon footprint, and a lot of it is about being thrifty with resources – something that tends to come naturally to us! Over the weekend, Ryan has done his bit by recycling plastic plant pots in my direction. He came across a newly landscaped commercial building, where the unwanted plant pots were being discarded.
I imagine the Apollo 11 astronauts had plenty to do while they were hurtling towards the Moon, but from a bystander’s perspective it was probably pretty dull stuff. Still, it’s Day 3 of the mission, so let’s have a look at what they’ve got stashed away in their space age picnic basket.
At the beginning of the year, I set up a new mission in the AeroGarden, growing two peppers (Popti and Redskin) and a tomato (Veranda Red). Ten days later, I had two tomato seedlings, which I had to thin to one. The peppers were a bit slower, but by 19th January they had germinated (and been thinned) too.