by James Nutter
Some ideas for other materials?
5:05 am in Getting Started, Help the project by testing this, Materials and Resources, questions, Seeking Advice by James Nutter
So I hate plastic, specifically plastic coming in contact with my food. I was thinking of other recyclable materials to build a window farm out of, any ideas? I have access to a large amount of 16 oz aluminum cans, can anyone think of a really good way to use cans? Any feedback is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!
Also, I was thinking of trying to use wine bottles, I have a plan on what to do with them, I will post pictures once I have a tower assembled!
Cans are just as bad as plastic PET bottles (if not worse!) because they are LINED with BPA containing plastic that comes in contact with the acids in the food. For that matter, anything that came OUT of a can is fully impregnated with BPA. YUCK!
BPA is the fly in the ointment with this whole idea.
I had scrapped the can idea months ago, I completely forgot that this post was pending. Thanks for that tid-bit! I thankfully don’t drink anything out of plastic or cans anymore but that’s good to know.
I have completely switched to wine bottles and have spent a great deal of time working out a near all organic and recycled material system (other than net-pots), that I am watering by hand and is working wonderfully (even in the summer heat). I have also condensed the system into a different construction and have made everything using only my hands and a knife. Since this is working for me to post now, I will try to post some of the pictures/ videos/ how-tos that I have been acquiring along the way.
http://anuttahwindowfarm.blogspot.com/
That is a link to the blog that I made to track my progress. I haven’t had any time to post much, but the most recent post shows how I prepared the wine bottles, if curious.
Interesting idea. Unfortunately, when I click on your image, it doesn’t expand any further in size. Tried in both IE and Firefox.
In order to suspend the bottles, you could try using bottle nets. You’ll have to use some string near the neck to close it a little to form a cup, but that can allow you to string them up.
The only thing I am not sure of is a replacement for plastic tubing to deliver the water/nutrients.
Or you could build a wooden frame around your window and make shelves for each row of bottles. Then just drill holes and put it through at the neck. Might even be able to counter sink a bit to give a better fit.
Look forward to seeing more of this.
Yea, me and my family and friends have all really gotten into coming up with ideas. I do have one very rough-draft windowfarm running right now. And have come to the conclusion that in an effort to not spend any money (other than nutes and net pots) on this design, I am tying the bottles by hand. I was going to make netting, but kind of like the simple look of tying with rope and twine. We refill the top reservoir by hand once or twice a day. It has been through a few different iterations, but as of now it is: aside from the catch basin, it is four stacked upside-down bottles. The top bottle is partially corked and drips consistently throughout the day. The three remaining each have a 3 inch net pot resting in the open bottom of the bottle, filled with hydroton pellets (basil, tomato, pepper). They are strung up on a planter hook in a non-A/C room and they have healthy root growth (so far the glass is working for blocking light as I had hoped). Unfortunately it is a little inset and with the angle of the summer sun in the northeast, it only gets an hour and a half of direct sunlight per night (resultingly the plants are stretching). Though I will be mounting it closer for winter, south facing, so it will get direct sunlight for a lot of the day.
Oh and, keep watching, I am going to take some updated pictures today and try and post them. So you don’t have to imagine what it looks like.
And sorry about the picture! I will try and upload a new one that is full size, it is supposed to be huge.
I have a lot of conceptual sketches that we did that I will try and scan and post as well. We were thinking a wood frame one afternoon, but as I said, in an effort to not spend, and use minimal tools, I am just tying. But if you like the look and make one of your own, build a frame! I bet it would look awesome in the right window. And you could put other glass between the bottles, that would give some interesting lighting in the winter in the right window. Decorations that grow dinner. Coolest thing ever.
And if you are interested in making it pump. Check out this post, Jenna used latex tubing, I believe with some success: http://our.windowfarms.org/2010/05/05/plastic-free-window-farm/
Oh and anybody that reads this, do you know how to post pictures on THIS blog.. I have looked everywhere for a while now and I still can’t seem to find it.
Hi James. Yeah, I really don’t know why WordPress/Buddypress doesn’t make it more obvious. If you look just above the formatting bar when you are making a post, there’s this tiny text that says “add media” and then there’s a sun and a video camera icon next to it. The sun is what you click to add photos. Drives me crazy that a basic functionality that we so obviously need is so not userfriendly. we are testing out a new system at http://www.windowfarms.org/instructions with the new version 3.0 release. Would love to get your feedback on it. -Britta
Thanks for letting me know! Unfortunately, I do not think I have those buttons. I compared my window to the screen shot in the help section and don’t have those links. I have tried it in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome.. I don’t get it..
I had started this thread to help another user out and the issue sounds the same. I do not know if there was ever any resolution to the issue. Maybe someone will see this and find an answer.
http://our.windowfarms.org/2010/04/27/web-site-usage-new-post-wpicture/
Where is this help section you mention?
Thank you, and in the top right of the post screen.
I did some digging around again and I wonder if it is as simple as this. I wonder if you are set as a “contributor”. One sentance on this page says “A contributor does not have the ability to upload files/images”. I think I remeber this original post of yours being stuck in the post “pending review” catagory which makes me think your role is a contributor.
They are not that timely in moderating the posts and comments on this site. It is strange because they moderated many of the posts recently, but a bunch that appear to be valid are still pending.
I had become a member a long time ago and when I first registered I must have been assigned an “Author” role because my first post appeared right away and it had pictures. I had joined in February or March I think. Maybe they changed their policy since then regarding role assignments…. Hopefully, an Admin can respond to this.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/
Yea that is what I figured it was, but couldn’t find anything to change. I joined a couple of months ago.Yea hopefully, I have a lot of things that I’ve taken pictures of to post along the way..
Hello James
As a herbalist I have been reading studies for about 6 years now (on the government medical database, http://www.pubmed.gov though unfortunately and as is rather silly, one needs to know medical terminology. I think it is a crime to block people from reading based on that). Well anyway…it sounds like you are very conscientious and very smart, so this may be sort of off to the side. But in case it does interest you, plastics leach PVC’s into our foods which cling to fatty tissues (brain, breast tissue, etc) and thus contribute to breast and other types of cancer. Note that there is a male version of breast cancer too. So you are very smart to avoid the plastic bottles.
I personally wouldn’t worry too much about plastic tubing so long as the liquid isn’t lingering there for any period of time, and just quickly runs through.
As for aluminum cans, aside from the plastic coatings mentioned above, aluminum itself has been linked to various types of cancer and to alzheimer’s, reduced attention span and iq, etc.
Anyone who is interested to check into this further can read about it on the Environmental WOrking Group’s webpage. Also see articles by Dr Joseph Mercola, you can sign up for free email alerts from him and he is really devoted to the subject of reducing chemical exposure in one’s life. Very good articles.
Best wishes everybody, what an exciting work this window farming is! I love the innovations of everybody here, and the glass wine bottles are a terrific idea! BRavo! –Drina
I was having similar problems seeing how to post photos, Tony advised me to get another account which enabled me to add the photos to my posts but now it is just held in purgatory pending an approval that never comes…the only solution I can think for this is to post a link to an off-site gallery such as flickr, but that’s a lot of trouble to accomplish a task that should be within the scope of this format if anyone moderated the technical issues.
Yea, I resulted to starting my own blog on blogger to track my progress a while back, I haven’t really updated very much. But I did put a link /\ there somewhere. Once I put up some more posts I’ll post the link again.
I just wonder how much good knowledge is being lost because the interface is this terrible. But then we’ll never know, because the interface is this terrible.
Hello all, I have finally found time to update my blog, I will try to make a post about it, but it is coming along and I will be posting again very soon.
http://anuttahwindowfarm.blogspot.com/
Is styrofoam bad as well? I was thinking that would be lighter, but it’s not exactly a “natural” product either…
Yea, styrofoam is just air bubbles encased in plastic. Depending on how it is made, there may be other negative chemicals inside the air pockets that could escape and add more leeched material. And in my experience, certain types of foam disintegrate in water more readily than plastic. I wouldn’t recommend using it.
Thank you so much Drina, for a while now I have been harping on people around me to stop using plastic, but didn’t have any direct correlations to disease that I could use as examples to convince them. And I never even knew about aluminum, and it seems to cause the exact negative effects that I try my hardest to avoid. Thanks again, quick question, do you know (if, or) how bad Sigg and similar water bottles are for you? I have amassed a little collection the past couple years in my efforts to avoid plastic, but am thinking I should maybe retire them now and find glass that will work.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/sigg-bottles-now-bpa-free.php
Thank you for that tid bit, glass it is, until I can get a new one maybe.
I thought about using those aluminum bottles at the beginning of my project because my family is on the no-reuse-plastic-bottle bandwagon as well.
The thing about that Sigg water bottle thing is, as soon as you start modifying the bottle, your exposing the aluminum without the coating. So it really won’t work as a material unless you can re-coat the newly exposed areas.
Plastics are just really easy to use and get your hands on.
Aluminum will oxidize to aluminum oxide almost immediately, and aluminum oxide is a nonreactive, stable surface. You don’t have to worry about losing any coating.
Well, I wasn’t thinking of using siggs for the farm, that would be ludicrously expensive… this is just a side bar on drinking containers… As far as the farm is concerned, personally I am using glass with more ease than it takes to cut and glue and assemble the plastic ones, and glass is about as inert as you can get. I have successfully used, standard wine bottles (3″ net pots), large, approx. 2L wine bottles (4″ net pots), beer bottles (2″ net pots), wide-mouth mason jars (3″ net pots), and standard mouth mason jars (2″ net pots if you use a lid ring to mount it on). Also I have been having friends and family collect other liquor bottles (personally, I do not drink) and will be trying out a few other options in the near future. Currently my only issue is that I think I may be burning my root ends late in the day when the sun is at a more horizon level, but me and my friend/family think-tank thought of simply covering the bottles with fabric, socks, or tights of some nature. But I am also not absolutely certain that the light is the issue, because I currently have a fairly slow drip rate, and it has been hot as hades the last couple of weeks (particularly in the area where I am establishing the farm).
And as always, I have an external blog where I am developing my farm systems and I encourage everyone to check it out and keep checking it out, because I get bored easily and love continually updating and trying new things. All of which I try to, in the least, mention on my blog so that people can use what I have decided doesn’t work for me, if it works for them.
http://anuttahwindowfarm.blogspot.com/
I too am concerned with plastic leeching from a window farm, and I think I have a solution that might be cheaper than using glass. What if one was to use standard polycarbonate bottles, but coat the inside surface with a layer of food-grade paraffin? The water would never touch a surface it could leech from, and because paraffin expands when it melts, if the coating began to melt from too much direct sun exposure, it would clog the passage of water to the next bottle, sparing any plants below from contamination.
One of my biggest reasons for me choosing glass was that it was free (just collected friend’s and family’s emptied wine/ beer bottles). With that said, I am interested to see how this would work. It would certainly open up the possibilities for materials (could coat wood possibly?, make non-glazed clay more efficient). Go for the gold Riley, and let us know how it turns out.
Using food-grade paraffin reminds me of something like a milk carton. Someone asked about that in the past and I figured over time it would just degrade.
I really like the wine bottle idea. I just hate dealing with shattering glass.
It really isn’t messy at all, if you do it right (which is pretty easy, I have an instructable on my blog) it splits on a generally pretty even line. The bottom splits off and sinks into water that you dunk it in to cool it. The edges are sharp, but a quick sanding fixes that. Check out my blog to see how I did it; I did a ton, and only 3 came out badly:
http://anuttahwindowfarm.blogspot.com/