I stumbled upon the WindowFarm project about 4 weeks ago and have been excited about it ever since.
The past 3 weeks I’ve been sourcing materials, building bits and bobs and tweaking, tweaking, tweaking to get our own WindowFarm to work properly.

Now after 3 weeks, I’m more or less done.
I haven’t posted yet, but this forum has been a very valuable source of knowledge and motivation. I would especially like to thank @Jesse Liberty for the T-Lift intro, Airlift Jedi Master @Brian White for sharing his immense knowhow, @Mikko Mattila for the “Pretty Design” idea and of course the founders of this entire project.

HANG IN THERE!
It’s been a testing but fun challenge to build our 4 column version from scratch. I’m completely new to the ‘airpump, aquarium scene’ and found creating the airlift by far the most challenging element. I’ve tried the inflation needle style, then the inflation needle puncturing airlift, then T-valve…. submersion etc. etc. It’s nice to have 4 column because this way I can quickly ‘side-by-side’ 4 design ideas. A nice little bonus is that I’ve be-friended a 70 year old lady who runs an aquarium shop in Amsterdam )) She thinks it’s all peculiar and interesting.
Now the Windowfarm is quietly dripping in the background and first signs of green are sprouting up. My advice to anyone: HANG IN THERE! It is very rewarding.

My basil is coming along, slowly but surely. The uploader keeps tilting this photo so it’s on its side.

Cherry tomatoes. They’re also soldiering on.

I’m worried about my lettuce, which is sort of scraggly and sad-seeming. I think it might be the constant temperature changes in the apartment, as the weather here in Alabama has been cycling between mild and cold. I added another cube with some snow peas in it. I think they might help provide some shade for when it warms up again and stays warm. Any advice would be very welcome.

The pattypan squash is my favorite. It’s vigorous and seems very happy.

Advice for my scraggly lettuce? The pump system still isn’t perfect. I really need waterproof tape, but I think it’s gotten better since I increased the size of my reservoir and cable-tied the intake tube to a rock to keep it at the bottom.

some lettuce and eatable flowers:

a windowfarm in vienna

I’ve got a east facing window in the Sunset district of San Francisco and I just started growing Oregano, Freckled Lettuce and Peas! I’m very excited and thankful to this whole community for helping me get up and going. I’ve posted a picture below (pre-planting of lettuce and peas).

I just purchased a timer for my air pump and I’m trying to figure out, well… the timing. Right now I have 3 starter plants, 3L of water to 3.75mL of FloraNova7-4-10 nutrient, a pH right around 7.0 and blues eyes and blonde… oh sorry, wrong forum. I have been watering on a 1 hr on/30min off cycle which, as far as I can tell, has not caused any serious natural disasters. My timer has 20 on/off settings.

So first question, how long can I let these guys dry out for? I’ve heard some people turn their pump off overnight (such as my anti-bubbling couchsurfers yesterday). I know this can vary a lot, but anyone have any advice?

Second, how often do I need to change out my water/nutrient solution? When it evaporates? Every full moon?

Thanks again everyone, what an awesome resource you have created!

Eric

This was about a week after we set it up. We started the beans & cucumbers from seed in a little greenhouse on top of the fridge. The top two pots are cucumbers and the bottom has 4 green beans.

We hung the pots with some hemp we had in our craft surplus & made the trellis out of the hemp & bamboo stakes. I’ve even made a bow and arrow out of the bamboo!

This is how the middle & bottom pot get watered. There is a piece of bamboo shoved up there to keep the tubing straight.

Here’s the reservoir, made from a cereal tupperware we got at Target & some ducting tape to make it lightproof. We took the little hinged pour spout off of the lid and ran the watering and drainage tubing through the opening. You can also see the timer there, right now we run the water pump for 15 mins every 2 hours from 6am to 6pm. As the plants get bigger we might have to adjust the schedule, but for now it works out.

We use a water pump we had around the house and it works great until the water level in the res gets down to about 25%. It’s a good reminder that it’s time for a refill without having the pump run dry.

Our first sight of beans!

Beans, beans….

….and more BEANS!!

Okay, enough beans. Here’s our first cucumber flower!

We’re getting a lot of male flowers, just waiting for that female! Well, that’s what we have so far. If you have any specific questions on what we used or how we use it leave a comment or send a message & we’d love to share!

Happy Growing!

-The Sanders

I’ve recently completed a wine bottle window farm and wanted to share a photo. I was able to cut the bottles using an old bottle cutter I picked up at an estate sale for $1. I strung up the columns using jute rope and hot glue. I am cheating a bit, using a submersible pump and polytube that I had left over from other hydroponic projects. All of the plumbing is stuff you can get for outdoor garden irrigation at Lowe’s. This was a really fun project and I think it looks pretty classy hanging in the window. So far I’ve got some problems getting enough light, but I’m working on a remedy for that. As I just signed up on this forum, I’m anxious to see everyone’s designs.

Cheers,

~Adam

Last week I finished my second windowfarm setup.  This time, I’m using a t-joint system to lift the water.

After seeing some great posts of other setups in the last 6 months, I decided to look for plastic pots that I could fix to a free standing dowel.  After no luck finding plastic pots in Baltimore in November, I bought some plastic cups at $1 each from Target.  The cups were easy to drill into for holes, and where the perfect size for 3 inch net cups.

After sizing a piece of bead chain around the tops of the cups, I looped the bead chain through a hole in a wooden dowel and set the cup in the chain.  The cups are spaced every 12 inches along the dowel:

A perfectly measured bead chain around the top of an upside-down cup.

The cup hanging on the rod.

In the bottoms of the cups, I drilled holes for my drainage lines:

The hole I drilled for this one was too wide for my normal tubing, so I used a short adapter piece.

I put drainage lines on each cup because I couldn’t get acceptable dripping from one to the next.  Water would stick to the cup, rather than fall straight down.  I also tried string and short sections of tubing, but water would splatter and/or miss the next cup during periods of high flow.  Plenty of friction keeps the system water tight.

Once hanging, an additional rubber band helped keep the cups level:

An additional rubber band helps keep the cup level.

One cup's drainage line flows into the next.

I like this hanging cup setup because it isn’t difficult to move cups around.  Though I’m not 100% behind the holes in the dowel idea.  It isn’t easy to drill aligned and level holes when all you have is your arm to guide you.  Alternative ideas might be to hang the bead chain on a hook, or to drill small holes in each cup and thread string/wire/chain through each similar to a V3 windowfarm.

The bottom cup acts as a reservoir.  It doesn’t hold much water, so I’ll probably need to add water every day when the plants get big.  Pre-mixing my nutrients in a gallon jug will be essential.

Bottom of the WF t-joint column.

Specifics on the t-joint setup:

• It is a bit more than 2 feet from the top of the reservoir cup to the bottom of the loop, and about 1 foot from the bottom of the loop up to the t-joint.  The reservoir cup is about 6 inches tall.
• The stand on the right is for the air pump.  This way the pump is higher than the top of the reservoir cup and water should never flow back into the pump.
• One key to this setup was having a tube with a wide inner diameter for the air+water line.  My reservoir line inner diameter is 1/8 inch, and my air+water line is 1/4 inch.  When the two lines were the same, the air tended to flow back into the reservoir.

Here is an annotated close-up:

Details on the air and water mixing setup.

I placed a valve on both the air and water lines so that I can have maximum control over the overall flow rate (I had lots of flow issues with my V2 airlift).  I also inserted an extra valve + t-joint as a drainage line.  My only concern is that the small valves may get clogged.  Only time will tell.

I have two columns for my two air lines coming out of the pump.  In between the two columns is a third column for lights.  I just have two lights, but I may add more.  This window faces east:

The nearly complete system. All that's left are the googly eyes.

I’ve planted sweet valentine lettuce, endive, jalapeno, basil, and black cherry tomato.  The lettuce are already a 1/2 inch to an inch tall, so they will be going in first.  I’m sure the tomato is going to want to grow everywhere, so I need to figure out a good way to manage it.

So far, I really like the t-joint.  It seems very stable and easy to setup.

Happy windowfarming!

We plan on helping out spreading the WindowFarm idea through Colorado. By hopefully sometime be able to set up some time to traveling to elementary, middle, and high schools and presenting our WindowFarm project we made from scratch. Using tools that anyone can buy from a local store and such. In order to do this we have created a mobile WindowFarm system (as you can see in my profile picture) to help maneuver the WindowFarm around. Here are some other pictures as well of our just 1-3 bottle system we have set up for it.

Here as you can see are some microgreens and some zuchinni growing and yes we are switching out the zuchinni to a smaller plant. We also have the main tubing right in front as well.

Here you see the set up we have with the main air tube, we have the straws for covering the chains we used so they dont rust.

We have a ten gallon tub filled with liquid nutrients. And you can see the setup we have in the water of our siphening system.

Here is I say a rough draft of our mobile WindowFarm. We are looking to simplify it down a little bit but this is just a start for now. The mobile system main use is to use for travleing to school to school without having to carry everything. It can also be used to move from window to window if necessary and I’m sure many other reasons. But I’m hoping for everybody who see’s this to spread the word so we try and kick this mobile system off the ground.

If any questions please email me at fcchavez10@yahoo.com, or message me on my profile.

Lettuce Catalogna – 58 days old

 edible flowers – 58 days old

Links:

klick here to see more pictures of the of the young plants in a windowfarm in Vienna

air-powered waterlifting with music