About Us

14-09-2004, 07:20 PM

Pascal Bourguignon wrote in
:

writes:

In article ,
P van Rijckevorsel wrote:
Pascal Bourguignon schreef
Has the experiment of growing plants under the light conditions of
the Moon surface ever been done? What would happen if you tried
to grow normal plants with lights on for 14 days and off for 14
days?

* * *
This will depend on exact circumstances, but put like that plants
will grow as much in a day no matter how long it lasts (24 hours or
a month)

Surely they'll grow more in 14 days of constant light than in 12-24
hours of same, but the 14 days of darkness will be very harmful for
most plants at growing temperatures. Prolonged darkness causes
etiolation and yellowing in all growing plants. If I leave
something on the lawn, the grass underneath takes only a few days to
look unhealthy, and two weeks would kill most of it, except, of
course, in winter when the plants are dormant. You can kill most
weeds, or set them way back, by use of light blocking mulches.

Constant light can be helpful when plants are in a vegetative state,
but if you do or don't want flowering, you have to control night
length. For example, short nights (long days) will make lettuce and
most brassicas (cabbage family vegetables) go to seed instead of
producing leaves, which is undesirable. Many ornamentals (and
fall-flowering weeds) need long nights (short days) to stimulate
flowering. I don't know which vegetables are in this group because
most of my experience is with a cold temperate climate. I do know
that beans (Phaseolus) had their short-day-flowering requirement bred
out of them as agriculture moved north from Mexico to southern Canada
in pre-Columbian times. Day length requirements could probably be
bred out of a crop, possibly very quickly by genetic engineering
techniques once the relevant genes are idenitified, but you aren't
going to have as easy a time getting around the fact that most plants
will use up their reserves and begin to die well before they've
survived 14 days of darkness.

Considering the difficulties of building a transparent structure that
is strong enough to resist vacuum and meteorites on the moon, I think
it would be much more practical to have surface solar collectors to
generate electricity to power lights to grow plants. Obviously,
you'd need some method of energy storage for the lunar nights, but
growing crops under artificial lighting is a solved problem. For
example, vegetables have been grown in deep mines in northern
Ontario, taking advantage of the natural heat at depth and the cost
of supplying vegetables in reasonable condition to remote areas with
too short a season and too little heat to grow them on the surface

Indeed, if there's nuclear energy available, it would be simplier to
use artificial light. But storing solar energy is hard and not too
efficient (you need a lot of heavy batteries, or complex
electro-chemical processing), so if natural light can be used at least
half of the time, the better.

You don't need to store it, just move it around. Set up arrays of fiber
optic collectors around other parts of the moon, and once the sun goes
down, point the other ends at your plants.

Sean

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Blue moon - blue moon.jpg	joevan[_3_]	Garden Photos	0	31-05-2010 02:08 AM
[IBC] Moon phases	Anton Nijhuis	Bonsai	8	23-01-2004 12:32 PM
Moon phases	Ireneu Castillo	Bonsai	1	22-01-2004 03:08 AM
Moon Star Watermelon	Lisa J Gehl	Edible Gardening	4	09-07-2003 10:44 PM
[IBC] Full Moon = Slow List	John NJ	Bonsai	3	20-03-2003 05:56 PM

Menu

About Us