What can I plant in this location - Mars?

Sorry, geek mode on again, but I love this sort of thing.

It seems there's quite a lot of water on Mars, and what's more, its at the surface.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24287207

There's oxygen too, but I thought we knew that years ago. And of course no shortage of carbon dioxide it seems.

I believe the soil is iron rich, giving it its red colour, so, I believe, a bit acid, but its got water in it, and there's sunshine, and carbon dioxide. Sounds ok to me.

Ok, I gather its a bit cold. Oh and I'm told the sunlight is not as strong, but hey, I can grow stuff up in the north east. If you grow stuff here you can grow stuff there surely?

 

It can get upto 20c near the equator on a summers day, but on a summers night goes down to minus 100c, so you'd need a polytunnel

 

Have to be electric though, Paraffin wouldn't burn in the Martian atmosphere.

Did it have oceans before the atmosphere was stripped off? Wonder if there was time for oil & coal to be laid down, of course, that would depend on life being there in order to do that.

 

NASA could just stick a nuclear reactor on there couldn't they? Generate a bit of extra warmth, then chuck some asparagus on there and see what happens.

 

There's no Ozone layer, so you'd need to gene splice it with an alpine like Edelweiss that can tolerate high uv levels.