by Rama Dennett
I love our window farm
11:48 pm in Completed Window Farms, Plants, posts with pitcures! by Rama Dennett
New plants in the farm!
So we had a little problem. Our strawberries died. I’m not sure what happened, but we could never make them happy. So after changing out the old plants with new ones and doing some changes, everything is growing well. We are growing mint, peppers, and nasturtiums.
Check out our last posting that shows the detailed explanation of how we put our farm together.
http://our.windowfarms.org/2010/04/26/our-hydroponic-window-farm-experience/
Now that we have had our window farm up and growing for a few months, here are some things we have learned.
Use net pots. We decided not to use net pots and had major clogging issues. The roots grew to the bottom of the bottles and bunched up creating water flow problems. Also, airflow could be restricted making your plants unhappy.
Control the dripping. By using short tubes to direct the drip from one bottle to the next, we are able to control what gets wet. The top of the strawberry plants hated getting wet and sometimes the drip was too far away from the other plants making them dry out. Now we control right where we want the drip to go.
Check for leaks. We had to refill our reservoir at least once a day. But after we used the short tubes to control the dripping we noticed we were using less water. Water was splashing out the sides. Also with the clogging water was getting stuck, using the net pots solved this. We now refill only about a half a cup a day.
Grow mint! The mint we are growing could not be happier! And it makes the whole apartment smell nice. No more chemical fresheners!
And try not to get the clay pellets in your garbage disposal. It doesn’t like them.
Hope you like the pics!
beautiful!
Beautiful indeed ! My Monks Cress is just coming up; hope it gets as nice as yours.
Did the peppers’ lower leaves dry out, or why did you remove them ?
Another thing:
Which one of your fertilizers is it that turns the water brown ?
I’m currently finding out the hard way that water without humic/fulvic acid isn’t really ideal …
Thank you,
The peppers just grew up like this, not a lot of leaves around the lower parts. The fertilizer I’m using looks peach red, it turns that brownish color after it circulates through the system a bit. I washed the clay pellets before I used them, but I think I still get some clay dust that helps turn the water brown. Instead of trying to change the fertilizer to the plants, I put plants in that seem to like the fertilizer.
These are some beautiful plants you are growing there! About the net cups: I have experienced a similar problem using cups with both too small and too few holes…my plants all died from wet and therefore soon rottening roots. I reduced the time the drip is turned one and punched more holes in the cups and everything seems to be just fine now!
Wow! This is really an amazing idea to grow plants. The concept is very similar to vertical farming. It saves a lot of space at home but at the same time it adds beauty to it especially when your growing flowers. Thanks for sharing all these pics. I would really like to use the same technique with my plants.