Here, I am going to highlight the nitty-gritty parts of the operation.

This is where it all starts.

For the resevoir exit, I drilled a hole in a rubbermaid and secured a small piece of tubing into it with some waterproof caulk. This small piece of tubing is then connected to the rest of the line by that funny white connecter doo-dad. Having a removable connection point makes cleaning very easy.

I find that I don’t necessarily need a check valve since the T-joint is significantly lower than the pump. I used to have one check valve for each line, but I found that the check valve restricted the one line quite a bit, so I removed it. After doing that, I found that the check valve line was much quieter. It seems that without the valve, I experience the gurgling noise. Hmmm

 

T-joint

A very simple setup here.  The resevoir is about a foot above the T-joint. This creates more than enough pressure, even when the water level is quite low. After the T, the flexible tubing continues for about a foot and then connects to the rigid tubing. To make this connection, all I had to do was shove the flexible tubing into the rigid tubing. No leaks! Easy.

Here’s the top of the farm.  I used zip ties to secure the rigid tubing to the chain. To get the coiled up, rigid tubing to straighten out, I boiled some water and syphoned it through the tubing. This allowed me to bend it and straighten it with ease.
I used to have some serious gurgling sounds. I found that by lowering the T-joint, I was able to get rid of them. No need for a silencer. The key is to make sure your tubing has lots of water running up it at one time.
One thing I really like about using these chains is that I can adjust the height of my pots at any time without disturbing the others.

Here is the bottom of one of the pots. You can see the net cups full of clay balls through the holes on the bottom. I thought I would have to plug up some of these holes so that water wouldnt be dripping everywhere, but (luckily) I was wrong!  By hanging the pots on a slant (see gallery), the water only drips out of one of the holes! This is another nice feature of the chain. I can change the angle or direction of slope for any pot at any time. So, what did I do about the bottom pot?…

For the last pot in the line, I poked a hole in a plastic bag, taped a piece of rigid tubing to it, and shoved a piece of flexible tubing in it. The tube connects straight back to the top of the resevoir. The net cup sits in the plastic bag. This is a simple solution that works like a charm. You can also see that the pot is hung at an angle.

This is where it all starts.

T-joint

The bottom of a middle pot

Pot-to-resevoir

Air Pump

Nutrient solution

Peter piper…

pot-to-chain connection point

resevoir connection point

Sideof the resevoir

Top of resevoir

Seedling Tray

Swiss Chard seedlings

Timer

A lovely tomato plant!

This is the whole setup

 

Hi All,

After much research, advice from you, shopping, scrounging, pondering, trial, and error, I have a nice completed window farm!

The total set up

My happy tomato plant

Hey fellow window farmers! I switched out my old gallon green tea jug with this…a football fish tank I’ve had since I was a little kid. There’s a built in filter system too, so hopefully that will help reduce the algae build up. Let me know what you all think!

i wanted to remove plastic from the equation so this is built entirely from fda approved materials.

i used food grade silicone tubing in black to reduce algae, food grade silicone sealant to connect tubing to bottom pots, terracotta pots that i sealed with beeswax, gaskets made from cork coasters, net pots made from foodgrade silicone muffin pans, a 5gal antique stoneware butter churn for a reservoir, stainless steel rod as a support for the tubing in the reservoir. i got seeds from organicseedpeople and started them in plugs around 2 weeks ago. they been under cree daylight leds from homedepot. i transplanted them to the wf 2 days ago and they seem to love it! no wilting or shock, in fact just the opposite.

in this window are 2 columns with 5 pots each. i have 4 windows of this size all facing east and, as you can see, a lovely view of a brick wall so next up will be filling all my windows with plants; not only will it be more productive but it’ll improve the view too.

cherry tomatos, basil, catnip, cree led supplemental light

basil, parsley, catnip, pepper

parsley

cherry tomatoes, basil

arugula

Hello,

I created my window farm about a month and a half ago using this design www.windowfarms.dk 

It is a 3 column t-lift system with a large reservoir, and it works very well. I water 15 mins on and 15 mins off in the day and 3 times during the night…every 2 hours or so.

I planted tomatoes, lettuce, basil, peas, coriander. So far the basil, tomatoes and peas are doing best.

As far as nutrients go, I use Iguana Juice Grow (it’s organic) at 3ml per liter and General Hydroponics PH down so that I stay between 6 and 6.5.

I change the reservoir water once a week.

For ventilation, I keep the window open all day, and will probably use a fan when the weather cools down.

Here are some pics:

Hello everybody,

I am a student of industrial design that loves plants and the investigation of hydroponic watering.

So i have started to design a new kind of Windowsfarm by myself, following the steps of the ready-made process.

I am documenting everything in this webpage.

http://veggafarm.wordpress.com

Any advice!???? =) Hope you like it!

Dear Windowfarmers,

I’ve been away for a couple of days and the windowfarm held perfectly, altough i was grossly amazed at the amount of different types of disgusting stuff going on in some of the plants!! (-:

Algea, chalk (and other stuff that was dissolved in the water and then the water evaporates), random gunk, but what most bothers me is the stuff in the picture. I’m afraid it’s a parasite or insect eggs or something. Any advice is appreciated: What is that stuff? Is it bad? How do i get rid of it? General advice on keeping a windowfarm, the plants and the pellets clean and healty?

(I rinsed the plants thorroughly under streaming water, that helped a bit i think, but if these are eggs, i think i want a better approach to get rid of them all!)

Hey Everyone,

I’m an international user in Maastricht, the Netherlands (originally from the US). My windowfarm is now up and running, with basil, chamomile, cilantro, and watercress. I combined the older, simpler instructions from this site with the new more extensive ones.

Tips that I’ve found, in case they’re not already mentioned elsewhere:

1) Make sure to elevate your air pump! Instead of putting it on the floor, put the air pump on a shelf or stack of books. Even if you use a one-way valve, the air pump should still be above the top of your water reservoir. Otherwise eventually the water will flow back up the tube, wetting and ruining the pump. This happened to me, and I had to buy a new pump. Likewise, like it says in the instructions, be sure to always make a loop in your tubes and cords, and never put the garden above a socket.

2) I was able to quiet my air pump by tieing it firmly to a cereal box filled with old clothes or some other sound/vibration absorbant material.

3) The simple older method for cutting holes in the bottom of bottles (exacto knife), to connect the bottles, was much easier than the new method, and I didn’t need a special rotary saw.

4) Instead of net cups, I used emptied individual pudding cups. It took some trial and error to find pudding cups that were the right size so that they didn’t get lost in the bottle, but still fit inside. The upside to that was getting to eat a lot of pudding.

5) If you’re growing plants from seed, using grow cubes, then you don’t need clay pellets specifically to fill your cups. You can just use reglar gravel or rocks you find outside.

6) My water reservoir is large and never completely full, because it has the hole in it to let the tubes come in and out. This would seem to affect the dilutions for the hydroponic nutrients, because the instructions are per liter, but my reservoir has an unspecified amount of water (~1.75 liters) in it at any one time. To fix this, I dilute my nutrients in a separate 1.5 liter bottle of water, allow the water level in the reservoir to get as low as possible, while still working, then refill it with the water from the 1.5 liter bottle. It’s still not exact, but it cuts down on the margin of error.

7) At the very top, the water was spurting and spraying everywhere as it came out of the tube. Instead of making a silencer with a medicine bottle (old instructions), I just used a 4-inch piece of masking tape to partially cover the tube. The tape should be parallel to the tube. Stick one end of the tape onto the front of the tube, about 1 inch. above the end where the water comes out. Then, just let the bottom end of the tape just lie loosely on top of the grow cube or plant. The water will come out of the tube, hit the tape, and then quietly drip off the tape onto the top plant.

I’m excited to try the T-valve assembly (elsewhere on this site) for my next project. I used the new instructions for one of the airlift mechanisms this time, and it has two disadvantages: 1) Since the airlift (needle and tube) is underwater, in the water reservoir, it’s hard to clean and difficult to diagnose the problem when it isn’t working, and 2) It’s somewhat unreliable, so it regularly stops working for various reasons and requires tinkering; and 3) It allegedly can’t lift the water very far compared to the T-valve method.

Good luck with your window farms! If there are any other users in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, or northwestern Germany (Aachen area), I’d appreciate it if you let me know by commenting here so we could get in touch.

For those in the Netherlands, there are many hydroponic grow shops here which were very helpful throughout the process even though I’m only growing herbal tea and vegetables. I’m using Floragrow hydroponic nutrients, which are avilable in Europe, with good results.

Jess

Hey everybody, I finally finished my first window farm (WF). It consists of an air lift and 2 rows of plant containers, with 5 containers in each row.

I put together a DIY guide, see it here (pdf).
I also made a Danish version of the guide (pdf), which includes prices and where to get the parts in Denmark.

I started figuring out how to build a WF, from scratch, about 3 months ago. I live in Denmark so buying a kit was out of the question. It took me a while to understand how the system was supposed to work, and then another while to figure out how I was going to build one myself. I had no experience working with the stuff needed to do this. Stuff like air pumps, tubes, and valves so it was all very confusing to begin with. I didn’t know anything about growing hydroponically either but ever since I saw the TED talk with Britta Riley, about a year ago, I have been interested in the project.

Now my WF is finally up and running and the plants grow bigger every day. So I want to thank this lovely community and the people behind the WF project for teaching me. It has been a lot of fun, and a little infuriating from time to time, when something just wouldn’t work the way I wanted it to.

I went through a couple of test systems, all of the air lift type, before landing on the one I am using now. At first I tried anchoring a tube on the bottom of a big water reservoir, but even though I knew this worked for others, I never managed to make it stable. The air from the pump kept flowing back into the reservoir, instead of lifting the water upwards. I then tried putting a small reservoir at the end of the row of plant containers. This worked very well; the reservoir had a tube in the bottom that went into a U-bend, which prevented air back flow to the reservoir. Unfortunately this setup forced me to reduce the number of plant containers I could have in a row, and I had to add water to the reservoir often, which was annoying. My current setup looks like this:

I put the reservoir, the air pump, and the U-bend below a shelf at my windowsill. There is a small gap between the shelf and the windowsill, where the tubes can get from below to above the shelf.

For reservoir I am using a 10 l (2.6 gallons) water container with a tap that is big enough for 2 tubes to fit into it. I made a plug of silicone sealant around the ends of the 2 tubes, to make a water tight fit (see info. box 1 on the sketch). To make sure the plug stays in place I wrapped some duct tape around the joint.

After leaving the tap of the water container each of the 2 tubes goes into a U-bend. *The U-bend needs to be at least 30 cm (12 inches) from top to bottom to prevent air back flow. (Thank you, Brian White, for sharing this information, the diagram you made really helped me a lot: http://our.windowfarms.org/files/2012/04/contest-with-u-April-7th.jpg)

After the U-bend there is a t-joint, where the water meets the air from the pump. I put a check valve on each of the 2 tubes leading the air to the t-joint, to prevent water reaching the pump (see info. Box 2 on the sketch).

In an effort to decrease the amount of plastic in my WF, and because I thought it would look good, I tried using coconut shells as plant containers. I hollowed out 10 coconut shells, cleaned them, and coated them on the inside with mineral oil to prevent them from absorbing water. I made a braided rope and nets for them to hang in. It looked really good but unfortunately the shells cracked. I think it happened because the shells I got were very old and dried out. I bought them all the same place but later on I tried with a shell bought at another place and it did not react the same way as the others. So I still think it could work with coconut shells, but I grew too impatient and my seedlings grew too big for me to do it all again with other coconuts. I turned to the well known plastic bottle instead, and I am very satisfied with the result.

I reused the rope I used to hang the coconut shells from but had to find another way to attach the new plant containers to the rope. I ended up with a kind of button on system which allows each plant container to be removed without dismantling the entire row. This highly modular system has the advantage that I don’t need net pots in the containers. I couldn’t find any net pots that would fit so I had to do without. If I do get my hands on some good net pots I will use them, though.

So I wanted to use coconut shells as plant containers, partly, because I wanted to reduce materials that could leak toxins into the water and plants. About this I have now come to think that the plant containers are actually the least important part. Most of the time, the water is in the reservoir or the tubes, so it’s more important that these parts don’t contain anything that will leak into the water. As the water drips into a plant container it goes straight through the clay pebbles and into another tube. Most of the clay pebbles that come into contact with the container are dry, as the water runs through the center part. I therefore don’t think the plastic bottles will be able to leak anything into the water, and if it does it will be minimal, compared to the reservoir and tubes.

These are the things I used to make my WF:

1    Air pump: Sera air 275 R plus. It has 2 outlets, a power regulator, and it comes with 2 check  valves

2    Water container with tap: 10 l (2.6 gallons). (It has the glass and fork symbol, which     means it’s intended for food contact; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_safe_symbol)

3    Tube: 4/6 mm (0.15 inches/0.23 inches). I used about 6 m in total (19.6 feet)

4    Tube close up: It has the glass and fork symbol too.

5    T-joint and check valve: I used 2 of each.

6    Water bottle: 2 l (0.5 gallons). I used 10 of these.

7    Twine: 2 mm. (0.08 inches). I used about 10 m in total (32.8 feet).

8    Hooks: I used 7 in total (2 for each row, 2 for the water container, and 1 for the pump)

9    Spray paint: 1 can

10  Buttons: About 1 cm in diameter (0.4 inches). I used 40 of these.

11   Wire: 0.3 mm (0.01 inches). I used about 2 m in total (6.5 feet).

12  Power drill

13  Drill bit (4 mm – 0.15 inches) and screw bit (6 mm – 0.23 inches).

14  Hobby knife

15  Scissors

16  Belt punch

17  Duct tape

18  Silicone sealant

19  Clay pebbles (Leca): I used about 5 l in total (1.3 gallons).

20  Nutrients: Biosevia grow and Biosevia bloom

21  PH test kit (I didn’t use this to make the WF but it’s good to have afterwards)

22  Seeds, soil, egg shells, and egg tray.

23  Planted seeds in egg shells. This is how I grew my seedlings.

The essentials for making an air lift type WF: air pump, water container, tubes, valves and t-joints, grow medium, and nutrients.
The rest (tools, plant containers, plants) can be improvised.

After making the plant containers and assembling the system I transplanted the seedlings into the WF by carefully uprooting them, cleaning the soil from the roots, and putting them into the clay pebbles. The seedlings I have transplanted have all survived, it’s been about 2 weeks now. I also tried transplanting some cuttings from grown plants into the WF. One cutting was from a tomato plant and the others were from a basil plant. The tomato plant cutting had been growing in soil for a while and had become rather large. I thought it had grown too big to survive the transplantation and for a couple of hours it looked like it would die. Then it suddenly started getting better and the next day it was definitely on the mend. After 2 days it was back to normal. (The bend on the stem is caused by the way it has been growing before being put in the WF).

1 hour after transplantation

The next day it looks better

2 days later it's back to normal

The basil cuttings (3 in total) had different reactions: the first had grown pretty big in soil but it had no problem adjusting to the new environment. The second had not developed roots yet and for a long time, after putting it in the WF, it looked like it was dead. All the leaves fell of but I just let it be and now it has developed new leaves and looks like it will survive. The third already looked rather droopy when I put it in the WF and like the second one it dropped its leaves and looked like it was dying, but now it has developed new leaves too.

Besides tomato and basil I am growing chives, thyme, chili, and lettuce.
Row 1, from the top: chili, basil, thyme, chives, and tomato.
Row 2, from the top: chili, basil, thyme, lettuce, and chili again.Later I want to grow more lettuce and some strawberries, cilantro, mint, and pepper.

I don’t have a timer on my system at the moment but I will probably invest in one later on.

Pdf guide (English)
Pdf guide (Danish)

Thanks for reading and happy window farming.
Maj