wow this looks like a dream home garden, so neat and well organised. I love that little wood hut that comes in the beginning of the video but what is that? I have seen it at some places but never knew its function.
Do you maintain the whole garden all by yourself? must be a tough deal. Congrats on your curie vote though :):)
Good morning. That little wood hut is a block for the leaf cutter bees we use as pollinators in the greenhouse. They're a tiny bee, their length is about the same as the width of a pencil eraser. Because they're so small they can pollinate our cucumber and tomato plants.
Leaf cutter bees are a hiveless bee, so they are quite docile. The block you see in the beginning of our video is where they rear the young. They lay an egg, provide a bunch of pollen for it to eat and enclose both inside a little cocoon made from bits of leaves.
We do have a short video on them.
Maintaining the garden doesn't require much time. When it becomes time to harvest things do get busy. Thank you for your kind words.
wow this is like science of pollinating and giving the bees a home to lay eggs,, hmm so nice. But don't they bite you? Bees in India -everyone is scared of them, they would bite you and it would be bad.
Leaf cutter bees are very docile. If I stand too close to their house they will not come out of the holes.
ohhh that's an interesting fact.
Bees of different behaviors in the world, hmm.
We have several types of bees that are hive-less. The mason bee is large in size but is also used for pollination in gardens, particularly for fruit trees.
Nice, the bees come by themselves in the beginning or you need to bring them or maybe invite them in your garden? lol weird thought
They are native in most areas of the US, but we kick start them each year by buying 100 cocoons for each of the nesting blocks. When we get better at harvesting cocoons and storing them over the winter we shouldn't need to buy them any more. Eventually we would like to generate a little revenue off of them by selling some cocoons.