The Biosphere Greenhouse and Food Garden host a multitude of practices in growing vegetables, herbs, and flowers as well as compost production. It is a hands-on educational environment for young and old alike. CWBR facilitates workshops at the Biosphere Hub, installs, and assist in existing vegetable gardens at visited locations. Taking into consideration the positive aspects and limitations of each individual space utilizing it to a fullest potential. The practice of growing one’s own food is learned through practical involvement from getting the soil ready, planting, and shared knowledge in caring for the garden.

The Biosphere Hub garden is looked after by visiting volunteers and is overseen by the Biosphere core team.

“We as volunteers are working in different areas in the garden. From planting seeds in the green house to replanting the seedling on the patches around the garden. During the summer month, the garden comes to a point where we can start harvesting the vegetables.” #foodlovers

A brief summary of some practices in the CWBR Food Garden

The Greenhouse. The infrastructure and design of the greenhouse provides an ideal space to produce a vast amount of seedlings throughout the year with a semi-controlled environment. Currently, the space is also housing a jungle of vegetables and herbs that flourish due to the conditions. At the moment the CWBR greenhouse is bursting with spinach, cucumbers, melons, tomatoes, corn, and herbs. 

Wormery for fertilizer. Selected food waste, hay, horse dung, and lots of worms covered in cardboard in an enclosed environment (such as a wooden crate) creates an environment where worms can reproduce and break down the waste to fertile soil. Installing a tap in the worm box to collect a liquid from the worms brings great benefits to the garden. Organic produce. The bi-product, worm leachate or worm juice, is full of good microbes that increase growth in vegetables – especially pumpkins, is a natural insect repellent, and can stop root rot. The spray mixture is diluted 1 juice/10 water.

The seedlings once large enough to be moved outside are planted in Huglekultur raised garden beds. These beds are long lasting compost heaps that regenerate themselves, created from twigs, branches, and reeds. They are ideal for areas with hot weather and do not require much irrigation. When planted, the seedlings are covered in hay and cardboard for mulch and to retain moisture as well as be protected from the strong sun.

Companion planting, a practice as old as time used by people worldwide. Companion planting has benefits such as growing healthier plants with higher crop yields, making the most out of the space in your garden, pest control, and attracting pollinators.  The natural chemicals exuded from the root networks of the plants create a thriving environment. The opposite is also true, certain plants planted together will stunt each other’s growth, reduce crop yield, and make the growing plant more susceptible to diseases and insects.

Collecting seeds for the next harvest. Some vegetables and herbs are left behind to collect seeds or beans, for example, for the next season. When herbs and vegetable plants produce flowers, it is an indication that seed collection can be done soon from the flowers themselves. Vegetables are full of seeds that can be collected for planting.

Anything is possible. Whether in a small or big space, food gardens with the right care can flourish almost anywhere.

The CWBR Hub showcases examples of a keyhole garden, hanging garden, permaculture gardens, and always expanding with new methodologies and introduction systems to add to the cycle of food production encouraging self-sufficiency.

No limitations in imagination. The produce from the garden is shared with many and used for CWBR projects. Recipes shared, new recipes created, vegetables pickled, and herbs dried.   

The greenhouse

Seeds are planted individually in trays and labelled.

Seedlings ready for planting

A closeup look in the the thriving wormery

Beans harvested for planting next season

From the greenhouse to the garden

Kale

Yellow pear tomatoes

Mustard spinach & kale

Pomegranates

Flat white pumpkins

Pickling Cucumber

Row of flowering leeks

Cherry tomatoes

Rainbow spinach

Melon

Corn

Parsley

Thyme

Basil

Rosemary

Edible Flowers

Volunteer luncheon with edible flowers to bring extra colour and decorate the dish

Flowers from leeks

Flowers from mint

Nasturtiums have a peppery spicy flavor

Tulbaghia violacea, Wild garlic

The Importance of pollinators

Pollinators are an essential part of seed production. Organic food gardens create a symbiotic relationship between plants and insects.

“The farm breeds ‘a balanced Merino with medium-grade long wool and a bigger build that is suitable for the meat market’, according to sheep manager Abraham Cloet” Extract from article

Farmer’s Weekly published an article in 2018 explaining the diverse enterprise at a farm in Swartland. This article is still relevant today, as it show-cases a space where farming and conservation go hand-in-hand through multiple practices.

The land, comprising of three combined farms, is 6 500ha total. Out of which 4 000ha is a fynbos reserve, called The Elandsberg Nature Reserve, and was established in 2008. The farm has signed up with Cape Nature’s stewardship programme to safeguard the reserve in perpetuality and implements several conservation projects. A multitude of game live in the nature reserve.

Cattle, sheep, and crops are farmed on the remaining 2 500ha. Through methodically thought out crop rotation and taking the soil, mainly Malmesbury shale and Klipheuwel gravel, into account the farm utilizes its resources to the fullest.

The farm highly values its employee’s personal growth and development through development programmes.

Read the full article: Farming & conservation go hand-in-hand on Swartland farm

With the new year in full swing, it is time for the first Western Cape Field Guides Association of South Africa (WC FGASA) meeting, facilitated by Cape Winelands Biosphere Reserve. This is an event wherein people from all disciplines of conservation and tourism have the opportunity to get together to listen to talks, network, and have discussions.

At this meeting, Dr Tony Rebelo will speak about the app iNaturalist and Dr Don Pinnock will speak about his latest book The Last Elephants.

The event will be in February and take place in Cape Town.

If you are interested in attending the event, please email: cwbioreserve@gmail.com for details and rsvp

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Dr Tony Rebelo is a scientist at the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). He obtained his PhD in Zoology at UCT in 1992 on the topic of the Preservation of the Cape Flora. He has co-authored books on Pollination Ecology, Proteas and Vegetation types of South Africa, as well as numerous scientific publications on these topics. His special interests are conservation planning, protea ecology and encouraging amateurs to get involved in scientific research. To this end he has championed the design of user-friendly field guides, the use of common names for plants, the Protea Atlas Project and iNaturalist. He recently won the Regional Award for work towards the restoration of the unique Cape Flats Sand Fynbos habitat at Tokai Park and its critically endangered plant species at the 8th World Conference on Ecological Restoration which was held in Cape Town in September 2019.

About the app: One of the world’s most popular nature apps and website, iNaturalist helps you identify the plants and animals around you. Get connected with a community of over 750,000 scientists and naturalists who can help you learn more about nature! What’s more, by recording and sharing your observations, you’ll create research quality data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature. iNaturalist is a joint initiative by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society and in southern Africa by the South African National Biodiversity Institute.

Dr Don Pinnock is an investigative journalist and photographer who, some time back, realised he knew little about the natural world. So he set out to discover it. This took him to five continents – including Antarctica – and resulted in five books on natural history and hundreds of articles. The Last Elephants, published last year with Colin Bell, is his 18th book and has a Foreword by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge. He and his wife, the novelist Patricia Schonstein, live in Cape Town.

About the book: The Last Elephants, compiled with Colin Bell on the state of elephants in Africa, has been called the 'elephant bible'. This book tells the stories of the continent's elephants and the dangers they face through the eyes of over 40 experts, researchers, writers, conservationists, poets and park rangers throughout Africa. They cover most of the prime elephant ranges from Timbuktu to South Africa; from Nigeria to Tanzania and are supported by images from some of the continent’s finest photographers.

In partnership with

PROGRAMME

8h30     Tea & Coffee

9h00     Welcome and introduction

9h15    Dr Tony Rebelo

10h15 Tea & Coffee break

10h45  Dr Don Pinnock  

11h45 Latest FGASA News

12h00 Lunch and networking

13h30 End of meeting

Imagine you are sitting in a city park for a lunch break, relaxing after a hard morning’s work, enjoying to do nothing, just looking at the sky. Awakening from your day dreams you suddenly become aware of a dozen or so dragonflies leisurely sailing back and forth some metres over your head, sometimes plucking a tiny insect from the air, a snack for the moment. Would you ever assume that these swarm-feeding animals are the strongest and most skillful insects on our planet? Pantala flavescens is their scientific name. Known as the ‘Wandering Glider’ in South Africa, this is the globally widest-ranging dragonfly species that occurs mainly in the tropical and subtropical zones of all continents, but only rarely appearing as vagrant in Europe though. In Africa, it may be found from the southernmost point up to the Sub-Saharan zone. As its vernacular name reveals, this dragonfly regularly migrates over long distances. Individuals in Millions have been discovered by Chinese radar stations even crossing the Himalayan up to 5’300 m a.s.l. The most spectacular migration was evidenced by the marine biologist Charles Anderson who lives in the Maldives. He observed Globe Skimmers every year arriving at the islands with the monsoon, coming from southern India in October in great numbers, then continuing on to the Seychelles and aiming to eastern Africa where they arrive with the monsoon rains that enable them to reproduce after having crossed 3500 km of the open sea. Exploiting of the surface waters emerged from the rains they may produce three to four generations due to their enormously quick larval development just needing 35–40 days. The swarms then fly back over the Ocean to the northern Indian subcontinent to start the annual circuit again. Amazing how they make their migratory way of estimated 14 000 to 18 000 km over land and across sea. Although they harness the tail winds of the steadily moving Inter-tropical Convergence Zone they still have to be on the wing while crossing the Indian Ocean. How do they orient during the day and at night? Where do they get the energy from? Do they perhaps feed on tiny insects drifted themselves by the winds? Many questions are still open.

Anyway, next time you come across a dragonfly you may remember the stunning achievement just of a small insect like the Wandering Glider. By the way: South Africa harbors more than 160 species of these fascinating creatures, all with their own habitat preferences and behaviour, some even endemic. But don’t forget that every dragonfly needs freshwater for completing its life cycle: streams and rivers, swamps and ponds, lakes and reservoirs.

Female Pantala Flavescens

Male Pantala Flavescens

“Oh, the buzzin' of the bees in the cigarette trees
The soda water fountain
Where the lemonade springs and the bluebird sings
In that Big Rock Candy Mountain

Many people will recognise the open lines from the song Big Rock Candy Mountain however the buzzin of the bees is a sound we are almost certainly hearing less often. (And just out of interest, no bees are hearing the buzzing because they are deaf – their communication is all visual and chemical.)

Jenny Cullinan, of UJU Bees is passionate about bees but not any bees, but rather wild bees more than bees in boxes, which she compares to most of the world’s chicken.  She regards these as “battery bees” – living in most unnatural circumstances in man-made hives. Wild bees, she says, live in nests, not hives. And where do the wild bees live – often in holes in dead trees or in protected rocky crevices. And in case we are getting the idea that all wild bees live communally, bees broadly live either social, semi- solitary or solitary lives.

First let’s focus on social bees – where we get our honey.

In a bee nest, Jenny shared at a recent symposium, wild bees only produce enough honey for their needs. By introducing them to man-made hives, where the queen is cut off from the entire hive, the bees go into super production, literally storing the honey in cells in the ‘Super” – the top half of the hive.

Jenny says that in the wild nests, disease and predators, such as the viroa mite and wax moth are not a problem. Her amazing studies show that, in fact, nests harbour tiny pseudo scorpions which eat the larvae of the wax moth. These pseudo scorpion are so small that they seem to be treated as pets by the colony, yes pets, not pests. The bees actually will bring wax moth larvae to these scorpions as food. (One can only see this happening under great magnification.)

Jenny shared so many interesting facts and video, in her recent presentation. She explained that the social bees have no immune system so that it is vital that they keep the nest extremely clean and disease free. One technique is that certain bees do not have the job of collecting pollen but propolis which then covers the walls and entrance. Propolis has disinfection properties so each bee as it leaves and enters the nest gets a coating of this essential oil. (These guys are smart, you have to agree. They have certainly developed some great techniques in their 18 million years of evolution.) Nature’s genius. Incidentally, this propolis has fire retardant properties, - it melts rather than burns. All Nature’s genius.

If they are so clever, what are the downsides for these bees, wild or in hives. There are Banded Bee Pirate Wasps, related to bees that predate bees. The wasps are most active at the hottest part of the day. At times of high wasp activity, all bees must remain by the hive, or rather say nest, to protect the swarm. Only as the day cools can the bees leave the nest to forage. And even then, they are not safe. They are favourite prey of birds such as Drongos, and flycatchers and even Sugarbirds who enjoy them as the bee’s rummage in flowers such as a Protea repens. Lizards also enjoy them plus they also have to avoid Yellow Jacket Wasps and robber flies.

And that’s not all. Bee numbers are being decimated by the use of pesticides, so their numbers are dwindling throughout the world, particularly our wild bees. Jenny noted that wild bees in Europe are in serious trouble. In Germany wild bees swarms are illegal and by law must be destroyed as they are believed to harbour disease and bee pest.

Bees are the pollinators of so many fynbos species. If they die out, so do so many fynbos species plus we need bees to pollinate so many of our food crops, particularly our fruit. Imagine, for example, no tomatoes, apples or pears on our supermarket shelves. There are areas of China where they have used so much pesticide, they now have to pollinate their fruit trees by hand with a paintbrush where they could have all this done by bees and get honey as a spinoff.

To bee or not to bee – Part 2

If you are like me, if you said bees, you would immediately think of hives with swarms of bees producing wonderful sweet honey but also that a bee can give you a nasty sting.

BUT not all bees are honeybees. This I learnt attending a lecture given by Jenny Cullinan, who studies all wild bees, social, semi-social and solitary.

Solitary bees by design are the main fynbos pollinators however the introduction of a great many honeybees hives is proving a problem to them and their numbers are declining.  The high density of honeybees means that despite them not being as efficient pollinators as solitary bees, their high numbers mean they outcompete the solitary and semi-social bees.  Another factor leading to their decline is that bees need a temperature of 25 degrees to fly. Social/honeybees reach this temperature earlier in the day as the nest warms earlier because of combined body temperature. Semi-solitary and solitary bees need the day to warm up before they can fly. This too means many flowers have already been pollinated by honey bees before they can be reached by their more solitary cousins.

Back 130 million years ago all plants were wind pollinated – no bees - however there were insect- eating wasps. The evolution to bees came about as flowers were producing pollen which the wasps realised was also protein. This discovery led to the evolution of bees, a specialised species of wasp totally dependent on flowers. This also led to flowers becoming more attractive as they discovered that there was an alternative to wind pollination. The more noticeable the flower, the more likely it would attract bees. Interestingly, bees however do not see red so the role of pollination of red flowers is filled by butterflies.

The bees also evolved a fascinating way to harvest pollen bearing in mind that they do not have baskets or hands. As they fly, they generate static electricity, so the pollen attaches itself to the bee.

Some bees are species specific so if a plant species goes extinct, so does that species of bee.

Carpenter bees, a species of solitary bee, is a buzz pollinator. Here the bee lands on a flower – an example is the flower of a Keurboom – grasps the flower and buzzes on the note of C. On ‘hearing’ this, the flower releases its pollen. A buzz pollinated flower will not release pollen to a honeybee.

Solitary and semi-solitary bees look after their young. Carpenter bees for example, excavate tunnels in wood in which they lay their eggs and raise their young. One bee species female nests in the ground whereas the male will sleep overnight in loose sand such as a mole rat run. In the case of semi-social bees, the adults raise their babies with the help of her earlier brood. They don’t make actual honey but, as pollen goes off quickly, they preserve the pollen with sugar.

This is just a taste of what there is to learn about bees and the ecological role they play in pollination. If you ever get the chance to attend a Jenny Cullinan talk, grab it. Her passion for bees and their conservation is infectious. She is writing a book on her research but until then, there is lots on the internet so go read more about these fascinating creatures. 

A solitary bee. The head of an allodapine bee protruding from the entrance to its nest in the tip of a dead pincushion bush.

“The chelifer found in South Africa is mostly Ellingsenius fulleri and is believed to be a predator of small mites, wax moth larvae and other arthropods found in the nest debris. They often cling onto the legs of bees and are believed to be spread in this way to other colonies” (Geoff Tribe). ujubee.com

New results released from research within the CWBR. The Fynbos Biome exists along the Southern Coast of South Africa and is the smallest, but diverse Floral Kingdom in the world with over 10,000 species.

“Now botanists from SU's Department of Botany and Zoology have found evidence that the largest Cape geophyte genus, Oxalis, has developed a unique association with the bacterial genus Bacillus, that help it to fix nitrogen from the air and to perform extraordinary feats of germination.

Furthermore, they proved that the Bacillus bacteria are so integrated into this symbiotic relationship that they are even inherited from mother plant to seed. The results of the study was published in the journal BMC Plant Biology recently, with the title "Nitrogen-fixing bacteria and Oxalis - evidence for a vertically inherited bacterial symbiosis".

To read the full article click link below -

New evidence that bacteria drive biodiversity in the Cape Floral Region by Stellenbosch University