What settlers would miss
What settlers would miss are a lot of things. Especially in the beginning of a colony on Mars the settlers have to face a whole lot of limitations. The new colony is small, little comfortable, and the recollection of life on Earth is strong. The settlers will automatically compare their old and their new life.
In case of a manned one-way mission the old life is unrecoverable gone, but the memory is still alive. Making Mars a new home requires some considerations about the things the settlers would miss.
Traveling
... is dangerous and expensive. Probably the whole life of most settlers would be spent inside the local settlement. The settlers will have to work hard just to keep themselves alive, managing food and energy to make ends meet. Traveling around the planet would consume large amounts of energy, and the new colony can not afford this.
What might help here is a selection of settlers with respect to their personal disposition about traveling. A person who is not interested in traveling on Earth will have no problem with this constraint on Mars.
A second option may be to develop three colonies, all equal distance apart at the points of an equilateral triangle and allow the slow rotation of crew placements. Rotation within three colonies separated by a hundred kilometres with different landscapes could allow a relief to desires to travel. No doubt expeditions would also take place within the borders of the triangle for those with sufficient interest.
Blue sky
The Martian sky is red, which can hardly be changed. The coloring of the settlement's rooms can help to counteract the desire to see the familiar blue sky. Placing green plants in front of windows would assist in keeping spirits up. Eventually a second generation would consider the Martian sky normal.
I got a good run down on biochar at this year's PASA rfenocnece. It covered pretty much what your post did. One thing the presenter mentioned was throwing char into animal pens, where the animals would walk on it and mix it into their own manure. Brilliant break the char into small pieces without generating a huge dust cloud, control odor, and pre-charge the char with nutrients.Seems you could get some manure and just dump it on the char. After it has sit around for a while, maybe chop it with an icebreaker tool and let it sit some more, then repeat. You won't get such fine pieces, nor instant results. But neither will you generate a dangerous cloud of dust. Barring that, I think you should keep a bucket filled with char near some discreet shrubbery.
Animals
... consume much food, and food is rare on Mars. Horses, dogs and other big pets are impossible in an early colony. Possibly, the settlers can afford some small herbivores as pets.
No doubt an important goal for any colony would be to develop an emergency 'sperm and seed ark' should disaster strike the Earth. In time animal surrogacy could enable such a facility to provide Mars with a variety of animals as the need arose.
I don't know about a garage sale at Cyan. That could get hairy! I think Cyan needs to merakt a DVD of the place, a Myst documentary, and that would be a great buy! Get the old gang back together, Robyn included; I would buy it! Or just make a new Myst game. It's been 5 years! I don't think anyone played Cosmic Osmo 2 and I know no one who plays Magiquest Online.
Technological Progress
Surely there will be technological progress in an independent Martian colony, but it will be much slower than on Earth. Why is that? The number of simultaneously working engineers on Earth exceeds the number of Martian settlers by many orders of magnitude. The economical power and, therefore, manpower of high profit industries on Earth yields the breathtaking progress in information technology, genetic modification, medical, etc. The Martian colony can benefit from the terrestrial progress on an informational basis, but hardware must be built in-situ, which depends on local high-tech industries. So, probably, the Martian settlers will watch a growing technological basis on Earth which they can participate only a small deal. Growing disproportions may have a depressing effect on the settler's morale.
