Gardeners of the Galaxy

Emma the Space gardener jumps in the time machine to head back to 1997, when Ukrainians astronaut Leonid Kadenyuk conducted a variety of plant experiments on the Space Shuttle, with thousands of students following along on Earth.    Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: Mission Report newsletter to get new episode alerts and bonus astrobotany content: https://emmadoughty.substack.com/.  

It’s Gardeners of the Galaxy’s fifth birthday! To mark this milestone, I'm gazing into the future of astrobotany with my very own crystal ball. What plants will we be growing on the Moon? Who are the next generation of astrobotanists preparing for space? And which seeds are starting their cosmic journey? Plus, a couple of fellow space-gardening enthusiasts share their own predictions. Find the sho...

Emma the Space gardener explores the concept of a Dyson Tree, an engineered plant that would grow out of an asteroid, creating a habitable environment for humans within. Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: Mission Report newsletter to get new episode alerts and bonus astrobotany content: https://emmadoughty.substack.com/.

Our Mission Specialist for this episode is Paul Sokoloff, a senior research assistant in botany at the Canadian Museum of Nature. Paul is very involved in cataloguing plant and lichen biodiversity in the Arctic and beyond. He’s also a sci-fi fan and an analog astronaut who has participated in multiple biological expeditions at the Mars Desert Research Station. Find the show notes for this episode,...

Emma the Space Gardener is back with another episode with a non-human Mission Specialist, Google’s “virtual research assistant” NotebookLM. Together they're diving into the historic Blue Origin mission that took astrobotanist Rob Ferl into space. Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: MIssion Report newsletter to get new episode alerts and bonus astrobotany content: https://emmadoughty.substack....

Happy new year and welcome to the first episode for 2025! For this episode, Emma the Space Gardener is experimenting with a non-human Mission Specialist, Google's "virtual research assistant" NotebookLM. Together, they're learning about China's recoverable Shijian-19 satellite, and the seeds it took into space. Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: MIssion Report newsletter to get new episode a...

Throughout human history, when people have moved around the globe, they’ve taken their plants with them. They’ve carried with them the plants they relied on for food, for health, and for happiness. But when European colonisers began to transport plants from far flung locations, they ran into a problem - keeping plants alive during long sea voyages. In this episode, I tell the story of the man who...

Our Mission Specialist for this episode is Benz Kotzen, a Professor of Landscape Architecture and Nature Based Solutions at the University of Greenwich. He’s here to tell us about his FEEDING MARS project, which showcased a live experiment growing vegetables, herbs and fruits in Martian simulant soils, using fish effluents from an aquaponic system as fertilizer. Sign up for the Gardeners of the Ga...

It’s Gardeners of the Galaxy’s fourth birthday! To celebrate this auspicious event, I looked up what would be a suitable fourth anniversary gift. Traditionally, there are two that fit that bill – fruit and flowers. So Ryan and I have baked a lemon cake with strawberry frosting and sugar flower decorations, and I have picked two fun stories from the astrobotany archives to share with you. Want more...

Our Mission Specialist for this episode is the wonderful Borja Barbero Barcenilla, who is talking about what happens to plant telomeres in space. Borja and I had a brilliant chat about his breathtaking research, including an upcoming flight experiment, a special mutant Arabidopsis strain, and the sci-fi experience of putting your plants into a particle accelerator. And if you’ve ever wondered what...

Our Mission Specialist for this episode is Patrick Grubbs, who recently completed a Professional Science Master's degree in Controlled Environment Agriculture at the University of Arizona. Patrick is one of the people behind the Space Ecology Workshop , an annual virtual symposium on bioregenerative life support, space agriculture, closed ecological systems, and more. He also co-founded The Spring...

In this episode, Emma the Space Gardener talks with Marshall Porterfield, Professor of Biological Engineering & Space Biophysics at Purdue University, who offers up some highlights from his long career in space science.   Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: MIssion Report newsletter to get new episode alerts and bonus astrobotany content: https://emmadoughty.substack.com/.

In the summer of 1863, a world-famous English botanist was pondering why the shoots of climbing plants twirl around as they grow. In this episode, join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores the fascinating world of plant movement, and what that has to do with the first plants that ever flew on NASA's space shuttle.   Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: MIssion Report newsletter to get new e...

Gardeners of the Galaxy is three years old! To celebrate, Emma the Space Gardener has been delving into the archives, digging deeper into three related astrobotany stories from days gone by, which all have something to do with trees.   Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: MIssion Report newsletter to get new episode alerts and bonus astrobotany content: https://emmadoughty.substack.com/.

It's time for another exciting episode, and in this one Emma the Space Gardener talks with Dr Emily Sessa, the director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden. Now Emily's job might just be one of the coolest in the Universe, but she has also recently been working on some NASA-funded research that could tell us a lot about the history of life on planet Earth, bu...

As 2023 is the International Year of Millets, Emma the Space Gardener explores just exactly what millets are, whether we'll ever see them growing in space, and why the International Atomic Energy Authority and the FAO just sent millet seeds into space.   Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: MIssion Report newsletter to get new episode alerts and bonus astrobotany content: https://emmadoughty.s...

In this episode, Emma the Space Gardener talks with Dr Jenny Mortimer from the University of Adelaide, one of the scientists involved with the new Plants for Space (P4S) project. Jenny currently has a bit of an obsession with duckweed, a plant with superpowers that could be right at home in space! Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: MIssion Report newsletter to get new episode alerts and bonu...

It's Valentine's Day on Earth, and love is definitely in the recycled air in the Orbital Garden! Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores the history of roses in space, and an art project that imagines a future for roses on Mars. Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: MIssion Report newsletter to get new episode alerts and bonus astrobotany content: https://emmadoughty.substack.com/.

  In this teaser episodes, join Emma the Space Gardener for a trip into the astrobotany archives. In 2006, researchers published their work attempting to grow marigolds on simulated lunar regolith. But there's more to it than that....   Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: MIssion Report newsletter to get new episode alerts and bonus astrobotany content: https://emmadoughty.substack.com/.  

The last episode of 2022 is here, and it's a good one! Emma the Space Gardener has been talking with Amy Padolf and Carl Lewis from the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden about their citizen science/education project Growing Beyond Earth® (GBE). GBE is really something special, because it allows school students to collect data that influences which plants NASA grows in space.   Sign up for the Gard...

In 2018, the German Space Agency launched a particularly ambitious project on a year-long space mission - a satellite equipped with two greenhouses designed to grow tiny tomatoes at gravity levels equivalent to those found on the Moon and Mars. But it was more than just an experiment to grow plants in space. In this episode, Emma the Gardener explores Eu:CROPIS, a project to develop a biological l...

In the latest episode, Emma the Space Gardener talks with two young scientists, Pia Bensch and Nils Wörz, from a team of students working on a space plant experiment. Glücksklee will spend a month on the ISS next year, exploring the relationship between a clover-like plant and its symbiotic bacteria.  Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: MIssion Report newsletter to get new episode alerts and...

With the launch of NASA's Artemis I mission to the Moon just days away, Emma the Space Gardener has put together a guide covering the highlights of the mission for space gardeners. Learn about the space biology experiments on their way to their Moon, the seeds stashed away in the Orion capsule, and more! Sign up for the Gardeners of the Galaxy: MIssion Report newsletter to get new episode alerts a...

The year is 2022, and all across the United Kingdom, something extraordinary is afoot. Ten awe-inspiring projects are coming together in a once-in-a-lifetime celebration of creativity, many of which involve space or plants! In this episode, Emma the Space Gardener is joined by Prof Fiona Burnett, the horticultural lead for  Dandelion . Dandelion is an amazing Scotland-wide grow-your-own project th...

Gardeners of the Galaxy is celebrating its second birthday! So join Emma the Space Gardener as she chats with Dr Anna-Lisa Paul of the UF Space Plants Lab, one of the astrobotanists behind the recent groundbreaking experiments growing the first ever plants on real Moon soil. Anna-Lisa also talks about her wide-ranging experiences, from being an analog astronaut to flying with her plants on the vom...