planning questions about good plants
11:00 pm in Plants, questions, Seeking Advice by JulySundryGrandeur
Hi! I want to have a window farm in the future and I have three big questions to ask for planning. I know I’m a bit rambly, so if you’re a lazy reader, the first bit of #1 is the most important.
1: What plants have you successfully grown and harvested for several months? Everywhere I look, I see people reporting on what they STARTED planting as an experiment, and maybe on what grew fastest right away or one specific problem they had, and then people seem to go silent. Window farms are a lot of time and — despite what some people say — money, for me to spend on a one month experiment. Meanwhile people are talking about things like strawberries, which I thought needed bees in order to even produce fruit. And beans, see below. Some people explain why simple leafy plants do the best, while others talk about getting complete nutrition out of their farms. I know your luck is not my luck, but what do you know can actually produce food in one of these things six months on?
2: Some foods, like cucumbers and big tomatoes, are kinda heavy. One guy is even trying watermelon! Do you have problems with towers falling over or bottles sliding sideways from the weight? Or does the weight of everything else (like the growing…pebble thingies and support beams) usually make the weight of the food itself irrelevant? Building is already complicated for me because plastic drink bottles are the one kind of container which no one I know ever buys. Later on, I’ll probably make another big post asking about all the materials I DO have.
3: Bean plants. I know nothing of them. How much food do they actually make? Since I know there’s quite a variety, let’s limit it for now to things that are non-toxic when undercooked (I AM going to undercook them at some point, I promise you), and fairly easy to find seeds for offline in the US.
Come to think of it, has anyone ever tried to make a list or database of common plants and how they do in windowfarms? It would be tedious, and handy.
1 – Lettuce has always worked for me. I had tomatoes as well, but I had to remove them due to size (the plants reached 4 feet).
When choosing plants, you need to look at how hard it is to grow and produce. Tomato plants require pollination which I have successfully done in a hydroponic setup. I used an electric toothbrush to simulate bees. Others may require something like a paintbrush to spread pollin.
2 – Heavy plants require modifications to the original design. This is where you get your creative juices flowing. Tomatoes would probably need a support structure, extra sticks for support, etc.
Watermleon would need a platform to bear fruit. You could have one at the bottom of the farm and grow them in the bottom section for instance.
3 – Bean plants are relatively easy. They self pollinate so you don’t need to worry about bees. Beans can be eaten raw so there is no way to undercook them.
Most bean plants are climbers – they will grow the length of the farm, so build yours with some give at the top.
Yields depend on the success of the plant. Even if a plant grows and doesn’t die, it can still have problems with light or bacteria.
I would suggest looking into Bush or “Perfect for Pots” variety of plants as well. They have the most success I find.
No database exists yet. The site really isn’t setup for something like that yet.
I have basil, dill, curled parsley, cilantro, pickling cucumbers, cherry tomato, physallis (ground cherry/gooseberry), bell pepper, lettuce, kale, swiss chard. The ones doing the best are basil, physallis, and swiss chard. I have lots of tomato blooms and have been using a vibrating toothbrush to pollinate, but only one measely fruit set so far. I am getting LOADS of berries on the physallis. They are gorgeous!
Cool, now I know what a physallis is.
Thank you both for your answers. It sounds like most of the plants I want to start with are likely to work, which is really good news. For heavy fruits, my plans have changed and I think I’m going to be building this thing into some actual shelves. That’s one technical challenge overcome.
I have had much success with leaf lettuce & romaine lettuce in my hydroponic system. I used a florescent light with 2 bulbs over my Emilys garden which had six pots. It was also in a sunny south window. I also experimented growing a better boy tomato. My lights were not strong enough to grow anything but cherry tomatoes. I got one big tomato but the texture of it was real soft & mushy. The cherry tomatoes were wonderful-just like a summer tomato in January. It was nice having lettuce & tomatoes fresh in my sunroom in the winter. Last year I planted cherry tomatoes from seed in Sept . I think they were called tumbling tom. they were advertised as being well suited for growing in a container. I picked about 50 tomatoes in the winter, then in April the plant looked so healthy I decided to put it in a big pot on the patio & put potting soil around it. At that time it started bearing like crazy & produced several pounds of tomatoes. It is finally slowing down after a year. I tried cucumbers without success , they bloomed but never had fruit, I did try to polinate them as I did the tomatoes with the electric toothbrush. I also gre Kwintus pole beans in my sunroom. they got 10″ long but were rubbery-never got crisp like they should in the garden outside. I grew them in coco fiber with the method where you flood it with nutrient then let it dry out before you water it again. I never spent the 400.00 for a proper light for beans & peppers & squash to do well. One thing I disliked about the coco fiber was I got fungus knats & had to buy a fungus spray. I also grew lettuce with success in flower vases with aquarium airstones. I am going the try the window farm soon, just saw it on a tv show last night & got interested.