The Dorm Life
5:18 pm in Education, environmental impact, Getting Started, Nutrients, questions by Jonathan DeMasi
Hey all,
I’m currently attending college at the University of Colorado Boulder and I am in cahoots with the environmental committee chair for the dorm I live in. I proposed that we should use all of the awesome windows we have to build a community window farm. If we get enough involvement we could easily split the cost among residents and so forth.
I have a few questions though. For starters – how much is the “maintenance cost” of a window farm supporting 16 or 20 plants? You have to add nutrients to the water at various intervals. Is this an expensive ongoing cost, or something that can easily be found that is a minimal expense? Also, the majority of people I spoke to so far are interested in growing primary fruit and vegetables. Strawberries are a big hit, so we will most likely try them. How about tomatoes? Are they very easy to grow, or do they take a lot of effort?
I am really hoping to get the wheels turning on this project in the next week or two, so any input would be appreciated. If I end up building it for the dorm I’ll be sure to post lots of pictures and follow up with success stories.
TIA,
Jonathan
I’ve just successfully raised my first 8 plants, all lettuce, to maturity and have been plucking mature leaves all week for a total of about 6 salads. I will calculate the final maintenance cost after the plants have run their full course in 2 to 3 months more. I would estimate that i need to use 3 tablespoons of nutrient and 1 gallon of water every 3 days for 8 plants. Depending on the cost of the nutrients you select, this may give you a rough initial cost for maintenance. I have recently covered my reservoir and modified my drip system which should help reduce evaporation, so my maintenance may go down slightly. Additional ongoing costs are approximately 1kWh of energy per month for the pump (again this is for 8 plants) which in my region would be $0.11 but $0 for me since I have a grid tied, net metered solar system. I’ve also added one 23W compact fluorescent for supplemental lighting that runs 6hrs per day for a total of 4.2kWh per month or $0.49 per month. From my research, strawberries can be difficult to grow successfully, but tomatoes, peas, lettuce, and spinach should be quite easy.
Thanks so much! I’d love to hear about the final figures you come up with. The electric isn’t really an issue. Though we do try to conserve it here, we don’t necessarily have a way to monitor the use, so.. :-/
I am starting a windowfarm at my sons school. The teacher wants to do 16 columns; what pump system should I use? Also, I heard strawberries are easy to grow but not tomatoes. What ariety of tomatoes are you using? Did you start them from seed?