This workshop is part of Het Gedeeld Domein en Future Gardening.
Tickets: €10
You never eat or garden alone. Even when you think it is just you and a carrot, there are the uncountable microbes that live in and on everything around us to consider. Gardening can be approached as a process of working with or against the organisms and environmental flows that inevitably show up, whether you’ve invited them or not. As we remember from Jurassic Park: “Life finds a way.”
When planting an edible garden in outer space, engineers attempt to simplify and control every aspect of the living environment, down to the microbes growing on the surface of a leaf. Here on Earth, many perennial and wild gardeners are taking the opposite approach and relinquishing control. They cultivate complex and biodiverse garden patterns that are low-maintenance and resilient in the face of environmental conditions which are neither controllable nor predictable. Most gardens exist in-between or as a blend of these extremes, including our own.
During this 90-minute workshop we will explore the plants, soils and other organisms that inhabit the Genomic Gastronomy Garden. We will visit the remnants of our space seed garden, keeping our eye out for the slugs, rabbits and other critters that decimated our 2024 space-seed crop, reflecting on what one can and should attempt to control when gardening here on Earth and in space. We will dig a hole and count worms and organize two other soil tests, comparing the garden’s soil to the more isolated growth mediums that our space seeds now sit in. We will identify and taste any of the remaining wild edible species that have seeded themselves without our planning. Finally, we will taste a few of the perennial vegetables we have cultivated and processed, stretching our imagination towards outer space & deep time while grounding us in the here & now.
