Veg as Cheap as Chips

The surprising thing about the new chicken industry scandal is that anyone is surprised. In its quest to feed people as cheaply as possible, industrial farming has cut profit margins to the bone, providing plenty of motivation for cost-cutting measures, even those that risk lives.

Is growing veg easy? There’s a big trend in the gardening media at the moment promoting growing your own vegetables as easy, or simple. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that, unless you promote something as ‘easy’, people aren’t going to try it. There’s a flip-side to that, of course; if you say something is easy and people try and fail, then they’re not going to want to try it again. Or maybe it’s just because the people writing the articles have been gardening for so long that everything they do has become routine.

If you look at the lists of crops that researchers suggest for space gardens and Martian farms, tomatoes are always on there. However, the first fruit NASA is aiming to grow on the ISS is a chilli pepper. I thought it would be fun to see how dwarf tomatoes and sweet peppers grow in my little space garden.

Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma explores some exciting interplanetary plant news and talks about two projects growing in the Orbital Garden – heritage hydroponics and space chiles.

Later this year, when the XROOTS experiment comes to an end, NASA’s Veggie growing system will be starting a new challenge. VEG-05 is a long-awaited trial of whether we can grow tomatoes in space – in this case, the dwarf variety Red Robin.

One of the challenges the world faces at the moment is antimicrobial resistance. Until the 20th century, commonplace illnesses caused by bacteria – such as pneumonia and diarrhoea – were the number one cause of human death in the developed world. Then we developed antibiotics, and these diseases became almost irrelevant. We added anti fungal, antiviral and anti parasitic treatments to our arsenal, and it looked like infectious diseases were on the run.

Jill Edmondson, University of Sheffield and Jonathan Leake, University of Sheffield

Very simple, plant the succulents in copper cap fittings. They will look attractive. Get more information at Poppytalk.

‘Organic Fruit and Vegetable Gardeners Year, The A Seasonal Guide to Growing What You Eat’ by Graham Clarke

Suttons and Dobies

Think before you allow poppies to proliferate. Poppies rob a lot of goodness from your soil.

After salad crop failures in Spain and shortages of courgettes, broccoli and other ‘long distance’ vegetables gardeners could to worse than focus on traditional and non-traditional root crops.