by James Nutter
Wine Bottle WindowFarms – Tower Two is Back!
2:56 pm in Completed Window Farms, Materials and Resources, Plants, posts with pitcures!, Projects in Process by James Nutter
With the recent holiday, I was finally able to do a little more work on mine and my parents’ farms. Coming up in January I will be moving into an apartment, and reinstated this farm to bring with me, with the hope that it will be producing or at least established by move-in time. The tower here is the one I will be taking, and is an inverted pyramid design (http://anuttahwindowfarm.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-newest-windowfarm.html). The major modifications that I have made to this to get it working again are related to the pumping mechanism. I removed the cork from inside of the bottle, replaced the needle, and reconstructed it with the check valve outside of the bottle. I then inserted the cork int the mouth of the bottle, rather than from inside the bottle. The function of all of this was to get the pump to work more efficiently and consistently. Previously the water would stop pumping if the water level dropped minimally, due to the height of the needle within the bottle. The needle lowered 3-4″, now it hardly needs any water to work. I also unclogged the T junction at the top which had built up algae causing a pump malfunction. And I covered the top (clear) bottles with black fabric to block out sunlight, and prevent algae growth. And a new innovation I thought of when working on my friend’s farm that isn’t pictured, but I added last minute was wrapping the holes on the drip ring with cotton fabric to prevent it from spraying off in every direction and causing water loss.
We had planted a boat load of seeds a couple of weeks ago, but unfortunately most of them didn’t sprout! So I filled my farm with what did sprout, and we will be planting some more soon to fill out my parents farm.
Here are some pictures:
My two peas (in front), and two eggplant (in back).
The left bottle is full of hydroton, but no plants due to the upcoming move.
A bunch of lanky lettuce seedings
The new neck set-up
http://anuttahwindowfarm.blogspot.com/
Beautiful job here, how do you like the rope suspension system? It looks great, that’s for sure.
Also, what do you think happened with the seedlings? What substrate were you using?
Thank you! I really like it, I did it like this because I wanted it to be al assembled by hand with simple materials. The only problems I have involve any time I need to swap out bottles, because it is a single piece of rope in the central gap of the bottles, you need to disassemble the whole structure. But as long as it is constructed well it isn’t an issue really. I do love the cleanliness of it though, both aesthetically and in it’s construction; simple and effective tends to be my goal.
And my best guess is either that I didn’t plant enough seeds, or the temperature in the room. The room is recently converted to year round, and because of that isn’t the warmest at all times, so my thought is that some of the more sensitive plants didn’t sprout (most basil, watermelon). I just use soil to start seedlings, it was really odd, it might also be the age of the seeds, some of them are left over from years long past haha.
And something I forgot to include, if you choose to use a rope suspension system, make sure to use nylon rope, not cotton, because the cotton has a bad habit of wicking water from various areas on the farm down to the floor underneath the system if not checked properly.
Don’t know if you are aware of this, but this method for breaking the bottle works much better than the ones, I’ve seen you using. I just learned this, and it works perfectly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFXngPx3w3M
James, that is a beautiful setup you have there. I was thinking of doing a double set of bottles but now that I have seen this one I am going to step it up to a triple.
Ilkka, that video is great, a bit long-winded but still great when it finally makes the point.