Day 1

It's not quite Day 1 on the planet - we arrived here two years ago after seventy nine years asleep on a ship that seemed to cry itself when we left earth, trembling and groaning in the agony of it. It is strange to have slept for so long and know that everyone you left behind is long dead, and the gardens you used to tend turn to dust, but there is no point thinking about that. They say gardeners believe in the future, and I recite that like a mantra as I plant.

The first two years we had enough food to last us, which gave us time to investigate this new landscape and discover plants that could sustain us. We have thousands of seeds brought from Earth, and will plant those too, but I'm tasked to the New Earth gardens, where we are experimenting with seeds and plants we have found here.

Today I press beans into the rich red soil. There are two beds - one that is enriched with humanure, and one that's just straight New Earth soil. I feel like they'll do fine without the extra fertiliser - I can smell the soil (I'm so relucntant to call it earth and it smells vital, alive, and there's bugs and worms and bacteria swimming in it like no Earth soil I've ever worked with).

So, beans. Spotted, purple beans. They remind me of borlotti beans, but when they grow, they are anything but. They're really, really twisty, growing in twirls and loops, and they grow so fast that you don't want to stand still lest you be entwined with them. Within a week, we'll be eating them. Their fruits are wonderful - little birds, my daughter calls them. Their structure does remind me of birds, and as they get older, the wings expand, and indeed, some of them take off before you can harvest them, flying into the night sky and glowing yellow for the bats to eat them and spit them out far away to seed somewhere else.

Day Seven

The bird beans, as we've come to call them, have fruited. They're delicious - a little like a star fruit crossed with a beetroot, earthy yet light. The trick is to harvest them before they take off, which about twenty percent do. The beans in the humanure have wilted and died. The old methods of gardening don't hold here.

We learn new things every day. Last week we planted a leafy green that we discovered was like a venus fly trap. It's huge leaves opened invitingly and waited for small creatures to brush up against it, then enfolded them in a kind of cacoon casing until the bones were dissolved. We put aside our nausea because it's the closest thing we can find to kale or spinach, and is incredibly nutritious. We've been collecting it in the wild for months now, and everyone delights in the fresh taste that counters the staleness of the emergency rations made so long ago. Sometimes we find little bones in our steamed greens, but we just push them to one side and add them to the compost. But it doesn't like being cultivated. We take notes and urge the botanists to label this one as important in the wild, and to protect the valleys where it grows so abundantly.

My daughter likes the space violas the best. They're not really violas, but it's the closest Earth flower to them. They are small and edible, sweet like honey, and their colours change according to the weather.

On stormy days they are almost fluorescent, and if it's humid, they soften to a baby blue with little polka dots on their petals. We collect them daily to garnish meals and everyone adores them. Someone has dubbed them chameleon flowers and whilst it's not quite accurate, it's stuck.

Day Twenty Nine

A week ago we lost one of our gardeners to the terra snails. People have, understandably, redubbed them 'terror snails'. They're ten times the size of Earth garden snails, but it's not just that - they have a bite on them like you wouldn't believe, and their saliva has a deadly poison that kills within minutes. The doctors are working on an antidote and we've taken to wearing reinforced gloves so we don't get bitten when we pick lettuce. It was a bit of a shock to us all, so it's been hard to maintain this garden journal.

Still, the fruit is starting to ripen on the trees. When we tried it in the wild, it tasted something like coconuts crossed with ginger, and we were able to grind it to a flour for spicy cakes. We've had to put guards on the gates to the garden though because there's strange animals trying to get into the garden. All day I can hear them shooting - hardly a peaceful way to work in the gardens. We're all a little bit on edge, but a gardener believes in the future, right?

Day Thirty Five

We lost three guards to the monkey like creatures that have figured out how to break in. We've been banned from the gardens until it's safe, but we harvest most of the cocogin's, as we've called them, and have been happily feasting.

The zoologists have collected gigantic eggs from the highlands - they don't know what creature they came from, but we have muffins, pancakes and scrambled eggs!

Meanwhile, I've started some seedlings in the polytunnels from the seeds we collected on the first expeditions.

Day Forty Two

I'm typing this in the ship. The creature came for it's eggs. There's not many of us left. We can't take off - there's too much damage. That fucker was huge. If you thought earth roosters were scary, you oughta see the New Earth ones.

Day Forty Three

The snails are in the ship with us. They're breeding fast. They're in the walls. They're eating all the wires.

We eat the last of the cocogins raw, in the dark.