Green Stuff

Farming is the key to civilization. Before humanity learned to plan for the future and plant crops in the ground, harvest and store those crops they were hunter-gatherers. This was a difficult existence, for almost all of one's energy went to finding food. Once farming was developed more time could be spent developing other areas of our civilization. Today the majority of productivity is no longer related to feeding oneself.

In the early colonization years in space this will not be true. We expect that the majority of time invested will be toward raising food. Only after colonies begin to expand will we learn the techniques of space farming to devote more time to other endeavors.

ISECCo has had a garden nearly every year since we first formed. Indeed, many of our members have been avid gardeners for a long time. Their gardening experience sometimes does not translate directly into the techniques needed for raising food in a CELSS (defined), so we began by simple experiments.

For example, how do you plant wheat by hand? This is a question that we have been examining for quite a long while. The best solution we have come up with is to hoe a trench and plant it rather densely with wheat berries.

{unfinished: we need to add the garden logs, for the early years, as well as ones for the later years! }