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To simulate a gardening experience on the Red Planet, researchers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and the Florida Tech Buzz Aldrin Space Institute have begun to experiment with "Martian gardens," using soil from Hawaii similar to the type of soil found on Mars. Martian soil is made up of crushed volcanic rock and contains no organic material, making plant survival significantly more difficult.
To gauge how much soil should be used and which nutrients should be added, researchers grew lettuce in three different types of soil: virtual Martian soil with no nutrients added, virtual Martian soil with nutrients added, and regular potting soil. They reported that the lettuce grown in the Mars-like soil with no nutrients added tasted the same, but had weaker roots and took longer to grow.
Next, they plan to conduct similar experiments with radishes, Swiss chard, kale, Chinese cabbage, snow peas, dwarf peppers and tomatoes.
Potatoes, guys, potatoes.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RedBear on Sunday October 09 2016, @09:15PM
Soil. It's all about the soil. Another good opportunity to mention the beautiful documentary film "Symphony of the Soil". Here's a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXRNF_1X2fU [youtube.com] and here's an excerpt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBOACBjnwJM [youtube.com] . You can pirate it from the usual sources or you can buy it at their website: http://www.symphonyofthesoil.com [symphonyofthesoil.com]
Turns out plants are actually kind of bad at using various natural resources. They form symbiotic relationships with animals, insects, other plants, and most importantly the micro-biome of the soil including several key fungi species. The fungi are capable of extracting nutrients like phosphorus straight from the mineral components of the soil and delivering them to the much more limited root system of the plant. Symbiotic bacteria take atmospheric nitrogen, which is apparently so stable that it's difficult for plants to use directly, and convert it into a form of nitrogen that can be readily used by the plant. When people talk about "nitrogen fixing" cover crops, that's what they're talking about. Crops like legumes and clover will help the soil support greater productivity from other types of crops.
Leftover components of the plants (leaves, stems, anything that isn't eaten or otherwise used) can be carbonized (charred into pure carbon ceramic microstructures), ground up and added to the soil to help support the growth of the soil micro-biome and the ability of the soil to absorb and retain nutrients of all kinds as well as water. This mechanical soil additive is called "biochar" and is different from adding decaying carbon plant materials to the soil. The carbon in decaying plants is available to be recycled while the carbon in biochar is permanently fixed in place. It is mainly the microscopic structure of the biochar that makes it a beneficial additive. I feel like this is not widely understood. There are plenty of videos about it on YouTube. Even a totally non-organic substrate, incapable of retaining moisture or nutrients, can very quickly begin to be transformed into something much more productive within one or two growing seasons. We could even take some biochar with us to begin the process.
Michael Reynolds has built self-contained homes for decades that they call "Earthships" [earthship.com] that are designed to collect rainwater in storage tanks sufficient for year-round household use even in environments as dry as the New Mexico desert (8-12 inches of precipitation per year), then use that water first for drinking, cooking and showering, then re-use it for flushing toilets and feeding indoor greenhouses filled with dozens of different kinds of plants that clean the air and grow food. The plants go absolutely bonkers recycling all the nutrients we call "waste products" that we flush down the drains. All the pathogens that could harm us get naturally neutralized by the soil micro-biome and the plants, just as they do in nature. The growth rates are phenomenal. It should be very easy to use similar systems in sealed habitats on Mars. The "dirt" you start such a system with is almost irrelevant. It basically just physically supports the plants in what is essentially a sub-surface hydroponic system.
I'd like to think that there are plenty of people employed by NASA or tapped for educated input on these programs that they understand quite well that there should be no real limit to what could be grown on Mars, given the introduction of the right combination of microorganisms, fungi and supporting plant and animal species. But given the nature of the experiments they seem to be trying to figure out what would grow hardily in Martian soil natively, without significant assistance. I'm not sure if there's really much of a point to such experiments. If we start colonizing Mars and we still don't understand how to nurture healthy, fertile soil that will grow anything we feel like growing in a long-term sustainable way, don't we deserve to starve to death? If we don't treat the soil correctly, we'll just end up with the same widespread problems of dead and dying soil we have here on our mother planet. And one of the worst things we do in agriculture these days is single-crop monoculture farming. They need to be studying which combinations of various crops symbiotically help each other grow efficiently in the Martian environment. They aren't going to have the kind of space and water necessary to farm on Mars in the ridiculously inefficient ways we do it here on Earth.
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¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ