The Space Plant Experiment You’ll Never Forget! GotG27

It’s Sunday morning, and Ryan is still asleep, and I got a bit bored and started playing around with one of those “blog title generators”. (For those of you for whom this is a new concept, they generate click-bait style headlines for a topic you give them.)

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.

One of the plants that I was keen to transplant from the garden to the allotment was comfrey (Symphytum officinalis). I had several plants, which I grew from root cuttings several years ago. Some were growing in the concrete blocks in the raised beds – which turned out to be a mistake, as they’d grown very impressive roots and wedged themselves in firmly. These ones were extracted with a sledgehammer. I took them to the allotment and planted them around my new green cone composter, and despite the terrible abuse they are still alive and growing new leaves. It’s a tough old plant.

This new short video from the University of Florida Space Plants Lab explains how and why they’re studying how plants react to being in microgravity.

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.

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.

Continuing with my goal of reading one of the unread gardening books on my shelf every month this year, I choose Salad Plants for Your Garden by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix as my book for May. It has been in my possession for two years since I bought it in a charity shop; it was originally published in 1998.

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.

Join Emma the Space Gardener on the Tiangong space station to learn about China’s botanical experiments in space, and why Chinese consumers are eagerly awaiting rice from heaven. Plus – what was the first plant grown in space?

In May this year, I said goodbye to Lavender Shed. Since then, we haven’t made much progress in erecting its replacement, Ryan’s new workshop. Now that the weather is cooling down we will pick up that project again, but it means that it will almost certainly be next year before we can remove Seagrass Shed and erect my greenhouse/shed hybrid.

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! Emma’s guest on the show this week is Dr Javier Medina, a Space Plant Biologist with the Spanish National Research Council. He talks about why it’s essential we grow plants in space, what we’ve learned from his experiments, and when there might be a greenhouse on the Moon!

Header image: India-Pakistan Borderlands at Night, NASA Earth Observatory, 2011.