IoT Tomatoes: the Strange New World of Self Pollination and Vibrating Plastic Bees

And now for something completely different . . .

I have been helping a friend with a new startup called CropDroid, which is an Internet of Things indoor/vertical gardening automation platform, where you can set up a highly scalable array of sensors (monitoring light, water, acidity, etc) and switches (for controlling light, water, nutrient dosing, etc.), and I thought it would be fun to learn more about the sector. (It's actually quite important - see how heavily landlocked countries such as Singapore are investing, and the pioneering work in Northern Europe with urban gardening. Supply chains for traditional agriculture are volatile and someone vulnerable, as we have so recently seen).

But while I helped to put together a website (www.cropdroid.com), and a pitchdeck (glad to share, used a fun tool with nice templates called Visme), I figured it would be best if I could actually try things out, and have some fun things to share with my students (Hi students).

So for me that meant just going to see what you could do on the much simpler side. As for me, in order to minimize risk of covid infection, I've been making use of grocery delivery (and very thankful for it, the delivery workers are my heroes frankly), and I thought, well, I like gardening so why not try and do some basic indoor gardening of my own - hence stumbling across the consumer level yet enjoyable Aerogarden set. I started out with a small unit, and have enjoyed having ongoing herbs available (no pesky bugs! 1000% organic. Fun). So I cracked that nut, and decided I needed to take one step up. Hence entering the strange world of self pollination and a thing that Aerogarden has called Bee the Bee. And it is perhaps the strangest consumer device I have ever seen.

I had started to grow the tomatoes in the larger unit, and didn't really know what I was in for, but it is fun, connects to wifi, there's an app that can tell you when to add more water (seed pods hold seeds, water runs over them, LED lamps provide sunlight, you add some nutrient now and then).

Tomatoes need a bit more attention than herbs (basil can run wild, compete with other herbs, you can snip and dry and make mint tea - hours of fun). And I gently tried learning about snipping and thinning and other tomato foolery. But things seemed to be going ok so far.

Then I read the bit about self pollination, and I'm like "what? excuse me?" because my heroes include bees -- I grow sunflowers and enjoy seeing them come in and out like an airport, spreading dusty yellow pollen all over the place. But inside, where are the bees? And how in the world can you self-pollinate?

A wise and patient friend said there are special tomatoes called Brent tomatoes that are seedless, but that is for a future experiment.

For now, I found that these tomatoes are both male and female (yeah), and to self pollinate, when the little flowers appear, you can just use your fingers and tap them, or gently shake them.

But where's the fun in that when you can get a strange new device that is like a robotic bee toothbrush time traveling next generation thing?

So in the spirit of scientific inquiry I ordered a Bee the Bee pollinator based on scant details or at least not watching the videos, and I imagined it would be filled with yellow powder looking like lemon drink mix and somehow you'd shake it over the plant.

But, no, it's wierder than that.

When I opened the package with nonexistent instructions, I thought, ok, I know what to do. I have a PhD. I can figure this out.

And I thought, ok, it's a cheap plastic toothbrush thing and you just sort of lightly tap the flowers.

Hmm, hee, ok, here we go.

Hmmm, this is a little odd, because the bee is flying in upside down, which doesn't normally happen, unless the bee is pretending to be a helicopter, which can sometimes fly upside down in carefully controlled conditions.

::tap tap tap::

Not.

Then I discovered what looks like a button, a hidden battery compartment, and I realized it was in fact a toothbrush type of vibrating strange device.

Fun!

Ok, so it does actually vibrate, and this is what helps to make "assisted pollination" helpful in getting a greater crop yield. More tomatoes. This is important if you want to get as many little cherry tomatoes as possible from your hydroponic small scale unit. Agtech indeed.

Here is a short live action sequence where you can see the daredevil skater helicopter bee doing acrobatics to disperse pollen from an unsuspecting flower that isn't quite fully blooming yet:

Conclusion and a Call to Action for Venture Capitalists and Hobbyists

Hydroponics are cool - and indoor gardening/vertical gardening are really important. I'm glad to be helping Jeremy on his massively capable system at https://www.cropdroid.com and I encourage you to explore if you are a venture capitalist or just a DYI grower or aspiring indoor gardener. (glad to share pitch deck) His system is very unique in being able to do 100x more than an aerogarden unit and helping in the automation of many/most things - so that you could manage an entire farm from a mobile phone. Cool stuff, relevant, important. Internet of Things, and AgTech indeed.