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Earthworms seem to enjoy Mars-like soil just fine after you add poop and water to it:
Two young worms are the first offspring in a Mars soil experiment at Wageningen University & Research. Biologist Wieger Wamelink found them in a Mars soil simulant that he obtained from NASA. At the start he only added adult worms. The experiments are crucial in the study that aims to determine whether people can keep themselves alive at the red planet by growing their own crops on Mars soils.
[...] 'The positive effect of adding manure was not unexpected', added Wamelink, 'but we were surprised that it makes Mars soil simulant outperform Earth silver sand'. Researchers added organic matter from earlier experiments to both sands. They added the manure to a sample of the pots and then, after germination of the rucola, they added the worms. The result: pots with all possible combinations with the exception of organic matter which was added to all of the pots.
Worms are very important for a healthy soil, not only on Earth but also in future indoor gardens on Mars or the moon. They thrive on dead organic matter such as old plant remains, which they eat, chew and mix with soil before they excrete it. This poo still contains organic matter that is broken down further by bacteria, thus releasing nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium for use by the plants. By digging burrows the worms also aerate and improve the structure of the soil, making watering the plants more effective.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:40PM
Well of course not. To know that for sure we'd have to go there and try it. In fact we'll probably have to go there, try it, fail, go again, try again taking the previous failure into account, fail again in a slightly different way, go and try again and so on until we get it right.
Step 1 though, before any of that, is to gather information and use it to make the best plan possible plan with the limited data available, in order to make that first attempt as successful and instructive as it can be. I mean that first attempt is going to be VERY expensive and risky, so as much preparation as possible makes sense. Simulations and approximations aren't the best tools, but they are a hell of a lot better than nothing.