6 Types of Peppers to Grow There's a colorful world of flavors, shapes and sizes to try for sweet and hot peppers! Here are some of my favorite pepper varieties to grow in the garden. Meet some of our favorite types of peppers!
12.07.2024 - 19:10 / modernfarmer.com / Dan Nosowitz
With Elon Musk’s SpaceX scheduled—though certainly not confirmed—to fly to Mars sometime within the next decade, our thoughts naturally turn to agriculture on the red planet.
Martian exploration and possibly settlement have become less sci-fi pipe dreams, and more scientific reality pipe dreams, which is a marked improvement in the actual likelihood of them happening. Assuming humans want to visit Mars for anything more than a quick visit (and incredibly long trip), agriculture of some sort is going to be essential.
Agriculture has been a fundamental part of space exploration for as long as humans have been venturing outside of Earth’s atmosphere; Russian cosmonauts have been growing and eating their own romaine lettuce for decades. But Mars offers something unusual: we know, for example, that its surface soil contains many nutrients Earth-plants need to grow. But would they?
Geologists at the University of Georgia, including some who had studied extreme environments like the far northeast of Russia, set out to use NASA’s latest Martian data. NASA has taken surface samples and analyzed them, and found that they contain most of the nutrients plants as we know them need, including nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
The geologists used all of that data to create five samples of “Martian” soil here on Earth, which replicated the texture and contents of five different Martian soil samples. These samples turned out to be, the researchers say, crusty and dry, and not particularly suitable for plant growth. This isn’t unexpected, as Mars is incredibly arid, cold, and lacks the protection from ultraviolet rays that Earth’s atmosphere provides.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the task is impossible, the researchers say.
6 Types of Peppers to Grow There's a colorful world of flavors, shapes and sizes to try for sweet and hot peppers! Here are some of my favorite pepper varieties to grow in the garden. Meet some of our favorite types of peppers!
You can grow wildflowers in a border, a pot and a window box as well as in a meadow.
Herbs and vegetables often need plenty of sunlight and space, which is seldom the case in urban homes and apartments. But we have whipped up a selection of edible plants anyone can grow easily, even in low-lit, compact spaces inside your home. Check it out!
Brodiaea are bulbous perennials with attractive funnel-shaped flowers in June and July. These can be blue, lilac or white, held at the top of slender stems on an umbel flowerhead, like a small version of an agapanthus. Like agapanthus, this plant does best in a sunny spot, sheltered from frost. Not only are brodiaea an attractive addition to an early summer border and patio pots, but they make excellent cut flowers.
The flowers of spider lilies emerge on bare stems between August and September. Named spider lily because of its long arched stamens, which resemble spiders legs, these flowers are exotic and bold, perfect for a late summer border.
Sweet william (Dianthus barbatus) is a short-lived hardy perennial, loved for its showy display of colourful summer flowers. The foliage forms low rosettes of non-spreading mid-green or bronze-green leaves. Large flower clusters are borne on sturdy stems up to 60cm high, made up of many individual florets with a surrounding ‘ruff’ of green foliage. Flower colours come in shades of pink, purple, red, dark maroon, and white, and blooms are often bicoloured, too. Sweet william is hardy, easy to grow from seed, and makes an excellent cut flower.
Never never plants, Ctenanthe, are tropical jungle plants, native to Central and South America. They’re grown as house plants for their decorative oval leaves, which are striped, sometimes in a herringbone pattern, in dark or light green, yellow or silver, often with a purple or red underside. There are 15 species in the Ctenanthe genus, with plants ranging from the compact Ctenanthe burle-marxii and Ctenanthe setosa to the towering Ctenantheoppenheimiana, which can grow to a metre tall.
Climbing plants don’t always need a big pot of soil to thrive – if you have limited space, these specimens will be more than happy to grow in small vases/glasses/bowls of water.
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How to Grow Marigold Flowers Marigold flowers are easy to grow and bloom nonstop through summer. Learn how to start these bright blooms from seed and keep them growing all season! Why grow marigold flowers in your garden?
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