by Ruth MOODY
Borrowing From Everyone!
2:03 pm in Getting Started, Projects in Process by Ruth MOODY
When I first saw this website, I thought it was great on so many levels. My group of friends store food ,and growing some indoors year-round fits in with that concept of thinking about the future ,when the country may suffer food shortages. As a 6th grade teacher, I am going to have the students build a class windowfarm of their own.It will be fun to see how they troubleshoot! My setup is not an airlift system. I am experimenting with a reservoir on top that drips down 3 containers to a receptacle at the bottom. I’m using a perlite/vermiculite mix without net cups that I prime with water first. The drip is very slow and I hope it will stay wet enough until I get home from school to recycle the reservoir. I won’t have plants in the farm until I get the drip speed down. I want to thank the person who suggested using a 5 gal. reservoir on a single outlet pump. I have a double outlet pump for my next windowfarm which is an airlift. I couldn’t find needles, so I used a ” T’ connector with a single outlet and regular airline for the airlift tube. The middle of the “T” is connected to the check valve and air supply, the other ends are connected to the airlift tube. The “T” comes in where the needles would have been. I’ve been able to get 5 feet of lift with this “make-do-with-what-ya-got” setup. Thanks to everyone for all the great ideas and comments and to Britta and company for the movement.
Hi!
Im currently testing airlift with a T-connector.
It dosent always work, but sometimes.
Middle of the “T” is where the air comes in and the upper connector is attatched to the airlift.
But what do U use below, just a short bit of hose that suck in water?
Thanks… my problem was that i dident have enough dept in my waterreservoir!
Hello, I am not sure if what I did has anything that may be useful to you. But my windowfarm design has a tower that is grouped into horizontal modules of three as well, I have it airlifting currently, but you may be able to restructure a little to use what I did, it may not be better, but just another version of what seems to be the same premise (I started with a drip system as well, just with my materials it kept clogging and didn’t have enough volume up top to support the growing plant mass). Anyways, you can find my trials and tribulations here: http://anuttahwindowfarm.blogspot.com/
I hope that something on there is helpful or at least saves you some trouble along your design route!
Good luck! And keep farming!
ps. Are you in the sciences? or another subject? I only ask because I am in my final year to get my teaching license and degree for high school english and plan on setting one up in my classroom next year, just curious if any teachers out there other than the science folks have built a windowfarm and incorporated it into a classroom that isn’t primarily science based. Thanks!
@jamesnutter & @RuthMOODY-
We are trying to get you guys some more teachers on board ASAP. We’re going to launch a contest for teachers in the next few days. Watch the teaching group that James started. We are going to direct them for inspiration.
Exciting exciting, I will make sure to check regularly to make sure people get and stay involved over there. Hopefully with a larger educator population some more back-and-forth will start up and we can get some great ideas rolling for all of the teachers out there! I am curious about the contest, shoot me an e-mail about it if you have a chance.
My school is run like a Nazi camp. Our time is not our own and 6th grade science has nothing to do with plants, so I have to steal time to do anything outside of the dictator’s curriculum. My students finally have some seedlings growing and we are getting ready to start the first column of our windowfarm. I just hope they don’t hassle us about electricity. Here in California school budgets are very tight! The kids are so excited to see their seeds sprout. To me, it is always magical!