by samenrahmen
Clay Pot Windowfarm
4:32 pm in Materials and Resources, Projects in Process by samenrahmen
(started as an update of mine, may deserve a full post)
How about this:
Use regular clay pots for the plants, tie moss/succulents/whateveryoulike to their outside, and do the rest by the book.
The moisture seeping through will feed the ”living pots”, any excess would simply drop below.
Should look nice.
I’m not certain that the clay will let much nutrients seep through.
(But feel free to try. Would probably look nice if it did work.)
No worries there – just look at the calcification on older pots.
Can’t say that I have that many clay pots… A couple of glazed ones(and we know that nothing seeps through on those),
but mostly it’s plastic ’self-watering’ pots… (Only way that I can keep plants alive, it seems… )
If you hung the pots up in net bags, you’d get free trellisses – the handles.
You should be able to drill through clay pots of your careful enough. Quick google search is giving how to results.
One small hole should be enough to allow nutrients through, and the plants could sit in the clay pot with hydroton
Or one could use felt around them, with a thick piece hanging down and acting as a wick to guide the water down to the next pot.
Which would eliminate the need for any tubing which might get clogged, and at the same time ensure the moisture supply.
Here’s something made of felt:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/karenmackay/sets/72157622612880600/
Interesting ideas. I commend the attempt at blown glass. Not really sure about the felt. Looks like neoprene…
I don’t like the felt, or any material that the nutrition is supposed to seep through.
The particulates in the liquid will sooner or later build up and eventually block capillaries.
Drilling the clay pots…
I imagine that it can be done with the same flat drillbits as is used to make holes in tiles. Just get a good quality bit.
The water would run through the bottom hole and through the capillary effect be drawn upwards, as the rest of the felt would always be in contact with the wick at the bottom.
It’s so far only meant to be an auxillary growing space – maybe one could pierce the felt and put in some clover seeds.
The other idea that came to my mind was to take a generous piece of felt, fold several pockets into it, and then attach it to the pot with the pockets going round it. Haven’t developed it further so far.
clay pots dry out VERY VERY quickly……..they truely do not hold the moisture…….thus being said would it not make the system work harder??
Hi – unlike pots in traditional dirt gardening, they aren’t supposed to hold water for a long time in hydroponics.
On the contrary: I started my WF using rockwool, and found that it tends to hold too much water for use with my setup.
I thought of clay pots simply because, unlike plastic bottles, they’re probably easier to hide from the eye by turning them into “living pots”. We’ll see how this pans out.
what about making something like this http://www.instructables.com/id/Tipsy-Pots-Tower-Planter/
From what I read, you have to make the clay pot wet, use a good bit and make sure not too much force and you should make it through the pot.
The window farm is running water so it shouldn’t soak it all up.
I have also seen that rockwool holds water, but that seems to work to the advantage because you avoid a lot of long roots.
Or how about a large PP flower pot with a felt coating, and with some holes drilled into it (haven’t found PP net pots so far) ?
No phthalates, lightweight, easy to drill.
I guarantee that roots will go through that felt. Not really sure what a PP flower pot is? Is that like a Jiffy pot (biodegrable pot)?
Polypropylene maybe?
Polypropylene, yes. There are wide neck bottles made of HDPE (sorry
) available, which should be even better.
sorry are we talking about putting moss around the outside of the clay pot as a growing medium or merely an aesthetic enhancment?
Moss will grow on rock as long as there’s enough moisture and doesn’t really need nutrients, so I don’t think nutrients leaching through the pot will be an issue, unless there are too many nitrates. My worry would be that not enough water would leak through as only a dribble would pass through the inside of the pot and if it drains straight out of the bottom then there will not be enough wicking through the pot.
However I don’t think that felt is a good idea, it would just attract moulds which could be harmful to you and your plants. If the pot didn’t have a drainage hole in the bottom but a couple of millimetres above the bottom (either by having the drainage up the side or elevating the height of the drainage hole in the middle, then you may be able to get the pot to absorb enough of the water to support moss on the outside.
When I have seen moss on terracotta pots naturally it has only been around the bottom. Maybe this is more to do with the moss establishing itself up the verticalsides against gravity, but this is the moistest point around the pot. I have seen moss on vertical brick walls, but mostly in the recess of the mortar between the bricks and generally this is a wet wall and often north facing, whereas the best option for your windowfarm is south facing.
Eh…
Having drainage holes higher up will allow the nutriens to collect in the bottom. Together with good access to air, that sounds like a good place to grow mold.
The reason ‘self watering’ pots doesn’t grow mold is that not much air gets into the reservoir.
As for moss not needing nutrients, only water, that’s a lot of hogwash. Moss doesn’t need much, that’s true, but what it needs it WILL get to. Which is why brick walls covered in moss tends to crumble much easier. The moss has ‘eaten away’ at the concrete. (Mostly,the water has washed out the minerals, but the moss’ roots will also break it up and lead water into the concrete to enhance the process)
A better solution may be to drill holes high up on the pot and score a spiral pattern on the outside surface to lead liquids all over. Then it’s just a question of leading some liquids to the holes. (A short piece of tubing with a diagonal cut to catch a drop now and then, maybe?)
Also, moss ‘prefers’ that lichens grow there first, as lichens are much more efficient at breaking up surfaces and improving the habitat. (Which is why in sci-fi and theoretical plans, lichens is among the first tools used in terraforming planets.)
@Mr Whippy:
Yes, moss as an enhancement. I guess someone with a Flickr account should invite Karen Mackay over, whose experiments with felt I mentioned above. It’d be interesting to know whether mold becomes a problem.
The wick I mentioned should provide enough moisture without the need to alter the pot in any way.
@Trygve:
A water reservoir in the pots themselves would be problematic, I agree with that.
But that’s because of a lack of oxygen – if you look at EarthBoxes and EarthTainers, they both have perforations and overflow holes to get a lot of oxygen into the water reservoir to prevent mold and keep the roots healthy.
Just to comment on the mold, it was not a problem for me from the testing that I did. There is precedence for other projects/products using felt for plant systems for both indoor and outdoor use. Also, many green-wall systems use felt. But the one caveat is that there are many different types of felt and most are no longer wool but rather a synthetic plastic. So, if you use felt you would need to do some research on the type you are using to determine which will meet your needs best. Hope that’s helpful.
OK so nobody agrees on the conditions that will encourage mold, so I asked wikipedia, which as we all know, never gets anything wrong and under mildew (the kind of mold I would be most worried about) it says:
“Molds can thrive on many organic materials, including clothing, leather, paper, and the ceilings, walls and floors of homes with moisture management problems. Mildew often lives on shower walls, windowsills, and other places where moisture levels are high. There are many species of molds. In unaired places, such as basements, they can produce a strong musty odor.”
I would say that a thin layer of moisture would create mold on a surface or in a flet, but not a small pool (say 5-6mm deep) I would also not expect to get mold if there is a steady dribble passing through agitating and airating the water but a few extra air holes may avoid any extra mold issues.
@samenrahmen… Karen McKay? Sorry I can’t find where you mentioned her experiments… a bit slow today
@Trygve Nutrients in brick? There may be one or 2 trace elements but I would say that the degredation of the brick is caused by water getting into the brick as facilitated by the moss roots which are merely there to gain purchase and would sit on the surface of rock being harder, if you don’t beleive me try putting a brick in a bucket of water for a week and then see how strong it is
…this does raise a question about how long clay pots will survive!
Interesting things can be found about moss here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/nalini_nadkani_on_conserving_the_canopy.html
including how mosses are more likely to accumulate nutrients than consume them.
I’ve had mold here on the surfaces of the rockwool and the Oasis cubes I’m currently using, but only on the surface, not below, where there is less aeration and even more moisture … complicated matter, but it’s probably because dust in the air that gets stuck on that surface provides nutrition for it.
@Mr Whippy: The K. Mackay link is the one just above the comments section.
Also, the mold spores hitch rides on dust, and unfortunately, unless you have substantial HEPA air filtration system and a scrub room connecting your house to nature, there is always potential for mold.
I have never tried it with hydroponics, but I know that if you add a little hydrogen peroxide to your water in soil, it can help. Hydrogen peroxide is just H2O2, which is more or less water with an additional Oxygen attached, and it readily breaks down aerating the soil and killing anaerobic ‘pests’. If you try it I would recommend diluting H2O2 substantially, or applying it directly with a cotton swab.
It really only is a problem during germination, when slow germinating/light sensitive/ill placed seeds are consumed by it.
After a while the mold is replaced by an unobtrusive algae cover.