beginning of spring in Vienna / Austria

tomatos in a windowfarm in Vienna

other plants in a windowfarm in Vienna

 funny garden

air-water-lifting video on youtube

have a look at a windowfarm in Vienna ( started Okt. 2011 )

…more pics and videos 

ciao, Joha 

After many weeks of trying to get the watering system to work, and the whole garden to stay up, I have one question: what do I do with all this mint!

Finding all the parts for the window farm wasn’t all that easy, since being in Canada doesn’t give me as many options for ordering online (unless I want to pay a lot in shipping). Most parts were pretty easy to find, but the following took some work:

1. Pump: Petsmart had a 4 outlet pump. The tubes and check valves were separate though.
2. Rigid tubes: do-it-yourself wine store. Get the distilling tubes (about $3) and cut off the bend on the top and they are the perfect length.
3. Hydroton pellets and plant food: I just got these from the garden supply store. Just tell them what you’re doing and they will know what type of food you need.

Some tips:

1. Use the nestlé bottles with the “waist” in them. The 3″ cups fit perfectly in them. These are what the v3 plans ask for. Perfect!
2. Use 2L bottles for the bottom reservoirs. Otherwise you will have to refill very very often.
3. For the 2L bottles cut off one foot to make the water return hole and cut off 2 feet on the opposite side to make the hole to fill it with water easily and insert the rigid tubes.
   

   There are 5 feet on a bottle. Cut off one to have the plant bottles empty into. Cut off the opposite two for the rigid tube and big "filling hole"

4. Use a modified needle system or the T system for the airlift. It makes removing the reservoir bottles possible for cleaning without having to undo air tubes. And it works better IMHO.
   

   Rigid tube with some vinyl tube on the bottom. The needle is inserted where they meet.

5.  Use the plant velcro tape to secure things together. Zip ties are not a good idea because you will have to take things apart during the building process and maybe for cleaning.
6. I bought a grow light. Just a small one. It probably helped during the winter. I bought a small fluorescent tube and attached it to the curtain rod above the window.

Video

My first windowfarm

Here’s a video of the system working. It sounds like a horror film because of all the wind outside and the pump running. The pump is not really that loud in real life. I just transferred most of the plants the day before. The mint has been growing for a few weeks and it grows really really fast. Faster than I know how to use mint. What do I use that much mint for anyway?

I’d love to help more people with their garden, especially if they have questions about growing at a northern latitude.

So this is my second season of window farming. I usually start a month before last frost so I can transplant to my outside garden and get a nice yield by summer. I may just keep the organic cherry tomatoes inside and see how they do. Anyone have specific upkeep tips on these? PH balance, watering intervals, etc.? First time growing cherry tomatoes in the window farm. Last year I started Romas and then transplanted.

Also, check out my friends organization below…big things for the better(local community sustainability through urban agriculture/leadership in the school classrooms). Raleigh, NC represent!!

Hey everyone!

In these last weeks we have been searching, ordering, building and fine tuning parts to get our system working as we designed it to be. And here it is! We put a short video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1G3CJ22gG8&context=C4d3f039ADvjVQa1PpcFNS065J4nWUFHmogFHkh8gP7hRdM0lE5yc=

The principle is completely the same as the ‘conventional’ windowfarm. The pictures below explain where we positioned the parts.

The challenge was to create a matching design in our living room, since it is hard to look around it. It is there! Therefore some of the technical/functional parts had to be redesigned. Next to that we added some features to maintain ease of use. These were:

• Easy to reach herbs / plants when taking care of them or harvesting: To reach the plants we are able to lower the construction by a system with pulleys, exactly like we described in our last post.
• All parts that are in contact with water can be cleaned easily: The reservoir exists of several parts. The bottom part is made of a piece of plastic that were made with a lathe machine. There are two O-rings that seal it to a rainwater pipe that serves as the reservoir. All the connections to the water and air are built into the bottom part.
• The reservoir shouldn’t look too bulky: By using a rainwater pipe (with a diameter of 70 mm) as reservoir it gives a slimming effect. On top of the reservoir we placed a specific part (for connecting water pipes to each other) where we put in a plant. This is also the last plant that gets the water before it drips back into the reservoir. This way it looks like it serves as a vase. A rather big vase, for (at this moment) a pretty small strawberry plant though…

Another difficulty was to get the water all the way to the top. We did not only have a large height to reach ( approx. 3 meters = 10 ft. ), but it also runs in an angle (45 degrees). By tuning the system we did it. The parameters to take into account are:

1. -Length of tube that sucks up the water in the reservoir
2. -Water level that rests on top of the T split.
3. -Amount of air pressure
4. -Thickness of tubes

We added some pictures to get an idea. Enjoy!

Thijs & Nienke

I just installed a new windowfarm in my girlfriend’s studio, I’ll post some updates as they seem to progress, same design as my loft farm.

This is a 3 bottle Tvalve airlift with several herbs
Cilantro
Purple Opal Basil
Rocket (Arugula)

They will be grown organically with the General Organics Nutritional lineup.

I’ll be adding another tower to the other side, eventually.

I have a WF that has a column, and a tall reservoir with space for four separate plants on top of it. Take look at this post for details.

I have planted tomatoes, basil, parsley, rucola, coriander, strawberry, chili, and lettuce so far, and I’ve made some observations. Since my design only has one airlift, and the reservoir pot has much more rockwool, than the small pots in the column, the benefits of hydroponics are not as obvious in the reservoir pot. The plants in there are growing ok, but only about as fast as stuff that I grow in traditional methods, in soil.

My conclusion is that the amount of water flowing through the growing medium does matter. It’s not enough that the rockwool is moist all the time, there must be flow. The flow pulls in fresh oxygen for the roots allowing the plant to grow faster. What I’m planning to do is switch the plants in the reservoir pot to herbs and other stuff that I’m not using in such large quantities.

I’m looking for any advice on how to maximize yield from crops. I have some Bibb lettuce that is now out of control and I’d love to start eating some , but I’d like to keep the plants growing and turning out new leaves as much as possible.

Does anyone have any guidance on how to maximize yield for lettuces, kale, basil, etc?  Pick leaves randomly along the stems? pick only mature leaves? pick up to half the leaves? only up to a quarter or eighth or sixteenth?

Thanks for any thoughts / experiences.

Parsley is doing allright after a couple of dead branches and leaves

There's seedlings in here too, but what i wanted to show was how unhappy these chives look. They've been surviving for 2 months now, but it looks like something's wrong.

Time for another update. The first few weeks haven’t been very promising, but things are changing for the better.

Some parsley roots i transplanted from soil are doing quite well. The first three or four leaves it grew died off, making me feel very bad about myself, but now look at them! Even the little one looks like it’s going to be a bad-ass parsley plant some day.

My sister gave me a couple of cuttings from plants from their garden. That seems to work out way better than i dared to hope. I had a piece of thymus (roots and branches). On first sight it looks like the old leaves aren’t doing very well, but when i looked closer, i was amazed at how much new little green leaves are groing in there.

One concern is the chives. They’ve been surviving all this time, and they’ve been growing, but they look really miserable. I’ve thought about adding some viagra to the water. ;-> Any suggestions?

Just a stick my sister pulled out of the garden, and look what happens!

In my former post i complained about bacteria and high PH. I stopped adding vinegar and stopped frankly kinda stopped caring about the pH. I just measured it at about 7.7, which is lower than the tap water (8.1). The bacteria are pretty much gone. The water is really clean, and this has greatly reduced the amount of attention the farm needs, which is one of the biggest wins.

Conclusion (for now): I’m one of many people with starting-problems. There’s a funny entry in the FAQ that states it’s going to take ['exactly'] 3 crop cycles to get good at WindowFarming. I’m starting to see the light, most of it was just patience. (-:

I won’t put all my pictures in this post, but you can view my Album here.

juhu!

unfortunately it is winter but here is the first blooming tomato in a windowfarm in Vienna.

the first blooming tomatos

backside of a windowfarm in Vienna in winter (some of them are under construction):

backside of a windowfarm in Vienna

frontside of a windowfarm in Vienna in winter (some of them are under construction):

frontside of a windowfarm in Vienna

 

another view of the frontside of a windowfarm in Vienna in winter (some of them are under construction):

frontside of a windowfarm in Vienna