I started working on this one several months ago, before the airlift system edged in with it’s sleek design and lower price point, but ended up moving house in the meantime and having to scrap my original plans. Luckily I moved to a place with great windows, so here is my old skool WF.

It’s still in process, I haven’t been able to work out the timers because my pump (QuietOne 3000)  is *too* powerful: it drains the bottom reservoir in about twenty seconds, and the timer I have only works at one minute intervals, minimum. So basically I just turn the pump on for a few seconds three or four times a day, for now that’s fine but I’m in the market for some fat drain pipe, it seems the only way to hold enough water + nutrients so the pump can cycle through a full minute. Plus I want to house the pump inside the reservoir. But you can see the plantings are doing pretty well, I have enough greens for sandwiches and salads a few times each week. Everything was started from seed using Bio Rooters.

Basil seems to love this method, the thyme is growing slowly so I don’t know if that’s a keeper or not.  Spinach is a bit leggy, but butter lettuce, frisee and arugula are doing fantastically well. I’m hoping to figure out the lighting situation come autumn so I can have green stuff growing all year ’round.

I started with drippers that were billed as 0.5 gallons/hour but they clogged all the time so I switched to 1 gallon/hour and they work great, haven’t stopped up yet.

There were enough leftover parts to get a good start on an airlift system, so I’m going to try some sungold tomatoes and more basil, radicchio, fennel for its purtyness, some vining nasturtiums and maybe even strawberries, since I am very impressed by the intrepid berry growers here on the site. I’m working on an integrated tubing/support and if it works i’ll post the evidence.

I had problems with my account and could not figure out how post for several months, so all the step-by-step problem solving I had planned to post all along has been superseded by all y’all but thanks for everyone’s help. This has been an incredibly fun and rewarding obsession, and I’m getting to know the folks at the hardware store really well (yo, parkrose!).