Willow as a Crop

How does a kitchen gardener choose what to grow? It’s about balancing quite a complex set of variables, which include the space and time available, the local climate and soil, the gardener’s skill level and what they like to eat. That last one is, itself, quite a complicated topic as culture plays a significant role. There are many thousands of edible plants on the planet; most people only eat a small number and grow fewer still.

Briardo Llorente, Macquarie University

Most vegetable gardeners lucky enough to have the use of a greenhouse use it for raising seeds early in the year, extending the season into the autumn, and of course growing tomatoes and cucumbers in the height of the summer. If you’d like to find something a little more exciting when you open the greenhouse door, these unusual crops will appreciate the extra heat.

Astronaut Steven Swanson tending to the Veggie garden on the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA

Over the last few years there has been increasing interest in unusual edible plants. One of the big advantages in having an allotment or a large garden is that it gives you the space to experiment with new tastes without having to sacrifice any old favourites, but some of the exotic specimens can be very tricky to grow.

If your recycling bin is anything like mine, then it’s overflowing with plastic packaging. The rubbish bin is even worse – filled with plastic wrap and other bits and pieces that can’t currently be recycled and have to be sent off to landfill. We’re drowning in plastic, and although there are people trying to live a plastic-free life, it feels as though that could be a full time job. Plastic has become the material of choice since the 1950s, since it is cheap and lightweight and can be fashioned into all kinds of things. The problem is that most of the 8.3bn tonnes of plastic we’ve made still exist, either in landfills across the world, or the oceans. It’s going to last hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and is causing damage to our environmental life support system.

In this NASA image from January 2020, you can see Lashelle Spencer taking measurements on ‘Red Robin’ dwarf tomato plants. Lashelle is a plant scientist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and this photo was taken inside the Plant Processing Area in the spaceport’s Space Station Processing Facility.

Header image: An artist concept depicts a greenhouse on the surface of Mars. Plants are growing with the help of red, blue and green LED light bars and a hydroponic cultivation approach. Image credit: SAIC

Over the last few years, it has become increasingly apparent that we are not alone. I not referring to aliens; I’m talking about the fact that each and every human being comes complete with their own microbiome – a collection of microbes that they take with them wherever they go. For example, if we move home, it only takes about 24 hours for your microbiome to overwrite the previous owners left behind. 

In November 2022, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) sent sorghum and Arabidopsis seeds to the International Space Station. The seeds have been exposed to life in space – inside and outside of the station – to see whether the unique environment will encourage helpful mutations. 

It’s nearly four years now since I became a hydroponic gardener. The AeroGarden Sprout is a distant memory, a sub-optimal design that was constantly gunged up with limescale and made a tremendous amount of noise. But my much simpler Ikea system is still going strong (despite being discontinued). I use fibre plugs as seedling starters, and a perlite/vermiculite mix for larger plants. And I’m about to run out of stockpiled Ikea liquid feed, so I have a new one from Fertile Fibre to try.

A small name but a large, 400 strong, species. There are many Sedum or Stonecrop family of plants to grow.