Gardening in space: hardy cabbages and leafy lettuces could soon be on astronauts’ menus
A good space plant has to be compact and produce a lot of edible food: it must be able to germinate from a plant pillow with only a small amount of dirt, do well under LED lights and be microbially fairly clean
Miami — It is not easy having a green thumb in space. Without gravity, seeds can float away. Water does not pour, but globs up and may drown the roots. And artificial lights and fans must be rigged just right to replicate the sun and wind. But Nasa has decided that gardening in space will be crucial for the next generation of explorers, who need to feed themselves on missions to the moon or Mars that may last months or years. Necessary nutrients, such as vitamins C and K, break down over time in freeze-dried foods. Without them, astronauts are increasingly vulnerable to infections, poor blood clotting, cancer and heart disease. So the US space agency has turned to professional botanists and novice gardeners — high-school students, in fact — to help them practise. "There are tens of thousands of edible plants on Earth that would presumably be useful, and it becomes a big problem to choose which of those plants are the best for producing food for astronauts," explained Carl Lewis, dir...
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