26 January 2004 Click image for full size!
This is the station greenhouse, located in the dome right above my room in the annex. This is the closest thing to an ecosystem that I've seen here since I got here- there aren't any other animals or plants here due to the Antarctic treaty, however, food plants are allowed. As you can see, there are some cucumbers on the walls, parsley in the foreground, some basil in the trays below. I think the grassy things are chives (although I've tasted just about everything here, I haven't tried those yet....). There are also some pansies in the sour cream tub (yum! edible flowers!!) and further in the back, you can see the wall of tomatoes- just little cherry tomatoes, not some huge hybrid variety. The place isn't really that big however- some people have closets bigger that this place and although there are quite a few plants here, they don't go very far when you have to spread it out among 220 people. I might see a sprig of cilantro here and there, but for the most part, it's the freshies delivered on the airplanes that really make the difference. Maybe I'll see more of this when we reach our winter population of 78, which should be in a few weeks.
Anyway, I volunteer here once a week- fill up the water tanks for the hydroponics, rinse the mung bean sprouts, check temperatures, pH, water conductivity, and a few other things- pretty low impact. I don't get to do cool things like add nutrients or things like that though. But it is a 1/2 hour in intense almost-sun with much higher humidity than in the rest of the station that I don't get the rest of the week!