Window Farming in Tokyo

11:28 pm in Completed Window Farms, Featured Post, Getting Started, International, made from scratch (without a kit), Materials and Resources, Plants, posts with pitcures!, Projects in Process, R&D-I-Y, Water flow by Ken

I live in Tokyo, and this is my first attempt at windowfarming. I love the idea and it’s been a great project that I’ve enjoyed building with my children.

It was at first difficult to find the net pots and compatible bottles to use. I ordered a crate of bottled water online, which was probably a bad idea. I also had to order the net pots online.

Below is my first prototype. I had trouble getting the airlift to work, probably because I stubbornly refused to buy the rigid clear pipe that was on the manual, and instead opted for a much cheaper clear tubing method.

After much trial and error I created this simple solution which so far as been completely reliable and my one air pump can probably power eight airlifts like this, since I have to turn the power way down to slow down the water going up.

(when I made this, I didn’t read the other entries which described this very method. Would have saved me a heap of trouble if I had just looked here.)

A few friends who saw this for the first time became very interested and want to build their own now.

After success with my first model, I decided (at my wife’s request) that I wanted to make a new one that was more pleasing to the eye, (this is in my living room) and so I want to Daiso, which is Japan’s equivalent to a dollar store, and bought some plastic buckets and hooks and came up with this new design, which my wife likes much better.

It’s all based on the same concept and inside of each bucket is actually the upside-down top of a bottle screwed to the bottom.

The cone-shaped things hanging down were bought at Daiso and are actually made to screw on to bottles and stick into soil to nourish plants, so it worked out quite nicely.

There are two airlifts which both feed out of the same reservoir at the bottom, and both end up draining back into it.

A few practical advantages to this system:

  • Because the pots are just hanging on hooks, you can very easily move the pots around for cleaning, light placement etc., without having to reconnect chains or other type of hanging systems.
  • Two systems hanging on one column saves space.
  • The staggered arrangement of the pots allow multiple columns to be placed close to each other.
  • An open top may help the plants to not become too lopsided. (I’ve seen videos of this problem sometimes happening with previous models.) You can just flip the thing around to get it to grow the other way.

I would love to get feedback from other members and especially anybody in Japan who is also interested in windowfarming.

I will post more photos as I make more models and improvements to my systems.

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