From Outer Space to Your Space

Astronaut Peggy Whitson harvests Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage aboard the International Space Station on Feb. 17. Credits: NASA TV

Recently on the International Space Station the astronauts served a crop of space cabbage that was grown and harvested entirely in space!

What an amazing accomplishment and a critical building block for humans in a quest to create extraterrestrial missions and habitats.

NASA chose to grow Tokyo Bekana cabbage due to extensive testing balancing growth speed, nutritional content, and actual taste testing. According to the NASA ISS pages ... "The Vegetable Production System (Veggie) is a deployable plant growth unit capable of producing salad-type crops to provide the crew with a palatable, nutritious, and safe source of fresh food and a tool to support relaxation and recreation. The Veggie provides lighting and nutrient delivery, but utilizes the cabin environment for temperature control and as a source of carbon dioxide to promote growth."

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Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage leaves are shown prior to Friday’s harvest aboard the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA

The ISS unit is lighted by energy efficient LED lighting that not only promotes effective use of limited resources by being an energy miser and not emitting large amounts of heat like conventional grow lighting. There is also something to be said of the soothing purplish colors of the red/blue mix of LED lights as the actual act of nurturing plant growth has been clinically shown to be calming and helpful for the human mind.

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Tokyo Bekana microgreens 10days old under personal LED lighting.

The very points that NASA brought up are wonderful advantages that you can bring into your home.

​Our new Personal Microgreen kit includes the LED grow lighting as pictured so you can grow right in your home or apartment crops of nutritious Tokyo Bekana microgreens. Microgreens have been shown to a higher level of nutrients typically contained in the mature vegie (4 to 40 times for key nutrients). Our easy to grow kits provide all the materials to grow out these wonderfully airy pieces of food.

With our personal LED system, you grow out one tray at a time regardless of the time of year or weather conditions. All without any pesticides, herbicides or chemicals (our custom growing media is sustainable coir with kelp and worm castings). All of the advantages that NASA saw in their Veggie experiments can be had in your personal space!

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