by burt
Help! I think my windowfarm requires a gardner!!
1:23 pm in Getting Started, International, made from scratch (without a kit), Nutrients, Nutrition, Plants, posts with pitcures!, Projects in Process, questions, Seeking Advice by burt
As pleased as i was with myself about constructing the window farm ;->, i’m starting to really worry about the next part: getting these plants to survive!! I looked for help in some stores in the neighbourhood, but nobody has any idea…! There’s some growshops for less legal plants, but they’re never open… very strange ;->
So here are some pictures and some of my concerns. I don’t even have specific questions, just this basic plea for help: HELP!! (-:
- First pic: These are Chives that weren’t doing terrible (just bad ;->) in a big plastic box with soil. I left it outside on the balcony in the summer, kind of gave up on it and 
then came across windowyfarming. I transplanted a piece that looked good with as much roots as i could into the windowfarm. The’ve been there for about a week now. I’m not sure they’re growing on reserves or windowfarm nutrients.
- The parsley i transplanted from the same box as the chives doesn’t look to good either. Yellowy leaves, but they could still be recovering from the transplantation. They have quite a big root, and i have no idea if they’re surviving on reserves or actually adapting.
- I’ve got some small seedlings of turnip 
tops and i think they stopped growing when i put them in the windowfarm (2nd picture left has one, it’s knocked over by a nearby drop of water) . Am i using the right nutrients at all? How can i check? The bottle of the nutrients says “NPK 5-5-6″ (among stuff that looks less important to me – the rest is in Dutch). I don’t really trust the hydroponic judgement of the guy who sold it to me, but he told me to use about 1/10th the dosage on the bottle.
- The pH of our drinking water is almost 8. I use natural white vinegar to get it down to around 6, but every few hours when i check, it’s going back up. It takes about two to three shotglasses of vinegar per day. 
Not only does this require a lot of attention, it also gives me the unconvenient feeling something’s not right here.
- There’s bubbles in the top net cup from where the water sprouts out of the dripping tube. The dripping rate is pretty high. It’s a fast drip, maybe even two drips per second per side (i can check this if it’s of any importance).
-After a week i changed the water for the first time. There was some white stuff floating on top (bacteria? fungi?). I rinsed the system very thouroughly but the new water started look like this in a day.
More pictures are here.
Ok that white stuff does look bad, it looks like bacteria cultures.. I think you need to add a bubbler to your reservoir. Just get a small air pump and an airstone so that the nutrients don’t get stagnant. Also, if you have any heat sources near the reservoir, that could be an issue.
Another cause is that something else may not be clean. The containers, the growing medium, its hard to say.
As far as the nutrients go, you should follow the directions on the bottle. Your water is a little PH high so getting it down to 6 is not a bad idea. I usually mix my nutrient solution in a larger bucket or bottle to make sure I get it right. You can cut the recipe solution in half while your plants are small, but once they are big they need a larger feeding.
Additionally, if your plants are moving from soil to hydroponics, they are probably in shock. they may take some time to recover or not at all (they may die). Its best to start from seeds I find.
when moving plants from soil to hydro, i would suggest washing the dirt off the roots with NON-CHLORINATED water (what comes out of your sink is chlorinated). i would also add a little bit of rooting hormone to the plants roots after they’ve been cleaned. and as far as the bacterial problem, i would clean all the bottles and surfaces (including the window/window frame) in the immediate vicinity of the ‘farm’ with a diluted bleach mixture. hope this helps.
Bleach is mostly hyrdogen peroxide, isn’t it? Here’s a guy lyrical about adding hydrogen peroxide to the water…
http://www.hydroponic-gardening.ws/hydrogen-peroxide-in-hydroponics.html
Good idea? Also, Julian, how do i obtain non-chlorinated water? Can you de-chlorinate it yourself? Or buy it?
And really thanks, guys! For the time and effort in helping me (and lots of others!) out!!
I am also having trouble keeping my plants alive. I just started my WF and I have already tried to put several plants and they all die soon after I place them in the WF. Yesterday I tried putting a beautiful mint plant and it died after about half an hour of being in the WF. I have tried also some Cilantro, and the same has happened. My feeling is that the window is way too cold for this plants. Could this be the reason? I have checked the PH and it is fine…the temperature of the nutrient solution is 20 C. But my beautiful plants keep dying…Can someone please help me!!!
Try a Indoor Window Insulation Kit (3-Pack), a plastic sheet that creates an air-lock thermal barrier.
burt, bleach (NaClO) is NOT hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). ive never heard of anyone adding hydrogen peroxide to their water, but i wouldnt personally try it. to dechlorinate your tap water you should let it sit out over night with an air stone agitating it to let the chlorine evaporate. i would NOT use tap water for any of my gardening even after dechlorinating it because the PPM of you tap water is probably too high and no good for your plants. personally, i would use distilled water (to both rinse the roots before transplanting and for your window farm system) which can be bought at any super market (it has close to 0 ppm). paula, your water could be the problem (ppm is a separate issue from ph). if not, your plants could just be very stressed, especially if you’re transplanting from dirt to hydro. it’s not guaranteed, but some rooting hormone could give your plants that little extra ‘umph’ they need to adapt and root in the new medium. hope this helps
also, dont forget to sterilize your growing medium. (whether it be hydroton clay pellets or other mediums). soaking in a diluted bleach mixture and then letting them dry should do the trick.
sorry, one more thing…paula, make sure your pump is pumping enough water to keep the plants root system saturated. if your plants roots dry out, they will definitely die. good luck
He burt, I understand that you’re dutch as well, our watter doesn’t contain that much chlorine so that shouldn’t be a problem the growshop’s for less legal indoor argiculture are actually quiet helpfull
about your plants, when you take them out of the ground the major part of the microscopical roots areleft behind and have to redevelop and before that is done they cannot absorb enough watter so you might want to cut of some leafs as well to prevent dehydration of the plant
Hi Bram,
Where i live (Eindhoven) there’s 2 such shops, both of them look exactly like what you’d expect: A closed garage door and a bunch of closed curtains. (-: Do you have a suggestion for a good place to go?
I cleaned the reservoir (it was VERY gross!!) and most of the tubing. I’ve boiled the vinegar before putting it in the reservoir and also i’ve added some 3% hydrogen peroxide that seems to help keep the reservoir bacteria-free. It looks better so far, but i’d have to keep an eye on it.
Also, some pieces of rope/wire i used to conduct the drops to the next plants (i don’t use bottles, so splashing is an issue), they develloped some kind of “snot”. I replaced them with non-natural (“plastic”?) rope, and so far it’s much less “snotty”. I’ll post pictures of this when i’m more certain, but so far i’m optimistic…!
what are you using to test your pH?
what and how much nutrition/additives are you adding?
stop adding vinegar
clean it out, make a covered reservoir, you got some shmutz in there, think of this as baby food. Would you feed that mess to your baby?
I dunno about metals, the metals could be dissolving into your solution. I would replace those with net pots and bottles to be sure.
just run it with clean tap water, most nutrients lower the pH, so you shouldn’t be needing so much acid.
just run it with tappy tap, test pH with fresh litmus paper or drops, don’t use a digital pH meter until you understand your nutrition and how to calibrate it properly.