The first week has gone very well. I am adapting to the diet
without any trouble, and the food is holding up better than
expected. It looks like we will be a little out of balance in
terms of vegetables vs potatoes. I think I'm going to have a lot
of vegetables left over. Next year we should plant more starches
and less vegetables.
Some crops did very poorly. The wheat, though not to bad in terms
of normal wheat production, was still not very good compared to
potatoes. Our onions didn't do very well; we must be doing
something wrong because about the biggest onion we've ever gotten is
2". Suggestions, anyone? Our best cauliflower has a HUGE
plant, but hasn't produced any cauliflower yet; we have another month
so hopefully we'll end up with a big head and a couple small
ones. The germination rate on the Royal Chantenay carrots was
really bad, though those that did germinate did quite well. The
Nantes half-long carrots germinated fine, but are pretty small
carrots.
Our potatoes, as usual, are the stars. Our yield looks like it is
going to be comperable to our last closure (2002 productivity paper).
The cabbage did fine, though not as big as most Alaskans would
expect. The lettuce is great, as are the turnips. Beet
productivity looks ok (especially considering it wasn't a very good [ie
shady] location). The sunflowers weren't planted early enough,
though there is time yet and if they do produce it'll be bountiful.
Over the last week I ate a variety of foods; potatoes were by far the
most of anything. The big four after potatoes are cabbage,
carrots, tomatos and turnips. Onions went into quite a few
dishes, but more as seasoning than as bulk. I logged everything I ate so I could analyze my diet.
When I started I was not set up to sterilize human wastes, so this was one of my first projects. I'm not entirely enthusiastic about the results, but it is working. More experimentation next year.
I have kept a diary over the week; here are some extracts:
9/18/04 Day 1.
2 pm. I entered Mars Base Zero and locked the door behind
me. Then Frankie stapled the tape across the door so it couldn’t
be opened from the outside. I needed the staple gun so she went
around front and passed it back through the plastic, which I then
stapled shut. So now I’m shut in until I run out of food!
9/19/04 Day 2
For breakfast I dug up a potato and cooked it in the microwave. I also ate a carrot.
I decided on a heavy lunch, digging another potato plant and making
mashed potatoes (just boiled and mashed them). I also picked 3
tomatoes and cooked them with a few grams of parsley to make a sauce
for the potatoes. Alas, I didn’t like it much.
9/20/04 Day 3
I spent the morning being useful. I looked over the seed packages
and found that spinach matures in just 38 days (probably needs to be
pretty warm though) so I planted half the tray I’d planted the radishes
in (I didn’t have space on the heat pad for more planting trays), and
will pinch off the radishes when they come up. I also blocked off
the air leaks along the west wall (stapled the visqueen to the wall),
which wasn’t leaking too bad, but every little bit helps. Don’t
really need it today, for it is in the 50’s outside. I also
cleaned and washed the counter—something it was sadly needing.
9/22/04 Day 5
The wheat that I had started to cut yesterday had been seriously
attacked overnight by mice. So I finished harvesting it, and took
half of it and spent the majority of the afternoon working on analyzing
it.
9/23/04 Day 6
It had been snowing hard when I woke up. A little bit was
sticking to the plastic, so I turned the heat up a bit to melt it
off. The snow quit by noon, but then the wind picked up a bit and
tended to blow the plastic around. Which helped removed the
leaves that had been sticking. I have to keep an eye on the
plastic because it is not super well secured at the top, and too much
weight will pull it down.
9/24/04 Day 7
I hadn’t eaten very much calorie-wise yesterday (I ate until I was
stuffed, but the calorie density was so low I only managed to stuff
down 1,000 kcal!), so I fried up a huge (3 pounds) batch of
potatoes. This made for both breakfast and lunch. I still
wasn’t very hungry by dinnertime, so I made a salad and a small amount
of potato soup. Turned out to be just right.
Over the last week I've had a lot of questions asked about live in here, so I thought I'd make the answers available
so you can get an idea of what life is like inside. Questions are
very much appreciated, partly because it makes it easy to write these
updates! So do send me more!
9/25/04
Ray C,
Mars Base Zero inhabitant
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2004