Property News · March 13, 2016

Gardens: expose yourself to atomic gardening | James Wong


Try your hand at growing ‘atomically energised’ plant varieties. Here’s how…No horticultural buzzword sums up the current mood of UK gardening more neatly than “heritage”. Whether it’s the reproduction vintage tools at garden centre checkouts or the faux meadow planting gracing the show gardens, to many of us the perfect garden appears to be one designed and built 150 years ago. But this fixation with nostalgia in gardening is a relatively new construct. Back in the mid-20th century, a space-age form of breeding captured the imagination of the public by harnessing the power of the atom to create a new generation of weird and wonderful never-seen-before plants, many of which we still grow today.The “atomic gardening” movement exposed wide ranges of plants and seeds to radioactive substances for short periods, as a fast and efficient way to induce mutations. Using methods as diverse as strapping packets of seed to the insides of x-ray machines at local hospitals, and even siting them within the fallout zone of nuclear weapons testing sites, scientists were able to generate thousands of new genetic combinations. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Gardens: expose yourself to atomic gardening | James Wong

You may also like...