At the
Florida Institute of Technology, a group of researchers and students have been trying out their martian farming skills. They tried planting crops in Earth soil (for a control), mock martian regolith, and the same regolith with added fertilizer. They started with lettuce, and soon added tomatoes, peas, and peppers.
At
Villanova University, students tried most of the same crops, plus herbs like garlic, mint, and basil, because colonial food doesn’t have to be tasteless. They also tried growing hops. You can insert your own joke about college student priorities here, but the first brewery on Mars is going to make a killing, so they’re probably onto something. They grew their crops in the greenhouse’s dim corners, to simulate Mars’ more limited sunlight. Other groups have experimented with
artificial lighting.
The research had some hiccups. Hurricane Matthew interrupted the Florida team’s experiment. College students forgot to water their crops. But Mars will not be without its own distractions, and it turns out most of them did just fine anyway. The lettuce even grew in untreated regolith. The others needed fertilizer, but otherwise performed admirably.
It’s not just about nutrients, either. The Villanova group found that the regolith’s clay-like consistency was too dense for many plants (including potatoes – sorry,
Mark Watney) to sprout in. But by adding material from coffee grounds to shredded cardboard, researchers were able to fluff up the regolith, making it easier for plants to punch through to the surface.
Of course, fertilizer and shredded cardboard don’t occur naturally on Mars. And if you have to spend the money to import them from Earth, you may as well just import food. So researchers are working on how to best use worms, small-batch bacteria, and the waste products martian colonists will have handy (Poop. I mean poop) to generate their own high-quality fertilizer.
There are still many challenges to overcome – Mars’ low gravity, to mention just one glaring example. But there’s definitely hope that future martian settlers will be able to shell peas, peel potatoes and maybe even brew beer with crops grown on their very own martian farms.
Korey Haynes is an Astronomy contributing author.