We grew our cucumber plants from seed and they just took off, they covered the trellis we built and tried to climb the walls within the first few weeks! They were producing lots of male flowers but there wasn’t a female for what seemed like forever. We ended up getting tired of waiting and assumed that if we did finally get one, then we would have one (maybe two) cucumbers. Wheeeeee!! We wanted to make some pickles and after all that work, two pickles just weren’t going to cut it. So I had the hubby take some cuttings from the tomatoes he had growing at the shop and was planning on hucking the cucs & beans for some yummy heirlooms & herbs instead. In the meantime, I had stopped checking the plants for female flowers and after a few days, he noticed that there was a full blown cucumber growing! We had read that you have to hand pollenate them since the bees usually do it, so we were especially surprised to see that it had handled it all itself. Or there was a phantom insect that did the work!

Before we had the female flowers, we weren’t sure how obvious they would be. Now we see they are totally obvious and are just popping up all over the place!

So, I guess that means the cucs are going to hang around for awhile and we will replace the green beans with tomatoes. The beans seemed to be a one hit wonder for us. Wah wah wahhhh….

We’re glad that the cucs get to stick around since they’ve made such a great window cover and really bring that corner of the room to life!

Happy Growing!

-The Sanders

***By the way, you can check out an article in the May issue of Maximum Yield Magazine featuring our hydroponics store in California!

some lettuce and eatable flowers:

a windowfarm in vienna

We are an after school class called Science Extaviganza. There are 5th through 8th graders in the class. What we are making is called a window garden. Some of the things that were hard were cutting the correct size and shapes in the bottles.

But the things that were easy were putting duck tape on the bottles so that the sunlight would not get through. And putting the pump in. And now we are putting it together, and and putting the tubes in the correct places. It is about finished and ready for the seed’s and to be put in the window!

- Olivia and Sammi

Hello every-one!

Barely three weeks ago we saw Britta’s presentation on TED.com and we were immediately intrigued. We started thinking about a design that would fit our house, which is a little different than most windowfarms we’ve seen so far. The back of our house (orientated towards the south) is made of glass, like a greenery and thus should be used like that!

The highest point (ceiling) will be at 3.10 meters (10 ft), too high for us to reach, so we thought of a pulley system (Katrol in dutch) we can lift it and drag it down.

We are building it right now, looks like everything will work out! We’ll post some new pictures soon!

See you soon!

Hi, I have usually just joined up old tubes to make my windowfarm airlift demo’s and I did not really understand why other people were having problems.  Then I did this experiment today pumping water to 18 ft high with a T joint and 2 ft of submergence.  (I did it). But there was the blocked tube problem over and over.  I had to put detergent in the tubes to help get off whatever grease or coating that new tubes have!  Finally it started working but was still stopping at times.

I think windowfarms need to issue an advisory about this.  So many people had a similar problem and after a day or 2 it went away.  Perhaps detergent is the answer, perhaps washing soda, perhaps dish soap.   A few quick experiments need to be done to find the best solution because it really seems to put new people off.   Thanks  Brian. The new video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_88_xUd5Zs

I am a biology student in the Ben Gurion University in Israel and our faculty building has a huge 2 story window which is not divided between the floors and would love turn it into a huge window farm! I do need some help in writing a proposal to the University on the environmental benefits (and maybe other benefits) of windowfarms.

Windowfarms recommend a 4 outlet pump but many people already have a 1 outlet pump and probably would like to use the one they have.  So here I have a video about a method to split the air stream to work 2 or more columns. If you just split the air with a Y or T splitter (even if both airlift tubes are exactly the same), the air will “choose” one tube (or the other one) and then all or most of the air will go up that one with zero or almost zero airlift happening in the other one.  This is because the “starting pressure”  is higher than the “running pressure” for any airlift pump.  So whichever one starts first will probably stay running really well at the expense of the second one (which will be either really slow or not running at all!)

The method I show to prevent this is to throttle both of them.  In the video, I use little “taps” to tighten and restrict the airflow to both sides until both sides run. AND stay running!   For this to work, both airlifts should have similar submergence (but they do not need to go to the same height).  You might also be able to see from the video that you can have one going a bit faster than the other.  So possibly, you can supply more water to some plants when they are big while in the other airlift supplying just a little to them because they are tinier.

There are other methods too but this one should be easy to do and to adjust.

2  airlift columns from a single outlet air pump!

I only did 2 columns because I didn’t have enough tubing to show 3 working.

3 columns  might work in my case (my pump is an old aquarium pump that I found dumped on the side of the road so it is probably not such a good model)

Update 2nd Jan 2012.  3 columns works too but in the case of my pump it is the limit.  Video Jan 3 2012. 3 airlift tubes working from a one outlet aquarium bubble pump

Youtube now allows you to edit videos so if I am not too busy, I will “upgrade” the video (and this post)  over the next week or 2 and show methods to measure the flow or at least compare flows under different conditions too. Brian

I am looking into building some windowfarms on my college campus at Southern Illinois University. I have a lot of support from faculty and think that I can get the funding, but I need specific research ideas. I was thinking about experimenting with nutrients to maximize yield, but don’t know what to compare. Any suggestions would be great. Thanks.

Dear Window Farmers!

I stumbled across this through the TED talk and thought that it was a brilliant idea. I am a nature lover and everything green but unfortunately my work keeps me tied to the city for most of the year, so when I saw this project I immediately wanted to set up a system at home. Whilst reading through some other window farmers posts I saw that there was another teacher who was doing this with her class and build our own system from scratch as i think that would be more fun and engaging for them. My plan Is to start small with my class first as a try-run and then if it proves successful it will be introduced to the rest of the school. I plan to document and film the whole project documenting the triumphs and journey of the children.hopefully then it will be edited into an educational movie that could be passed onto other schools. Keep up the good work windowfarmers! And stay posted for updates.
P.S. if any other teachers are thinking the same and have any questions I’ll be more than happy to help and give advice where I can

Rhys Berry
ISM

Do you know where I can find the grey recycled PETA material they use from that Plants On Walls site?  It hinders bacteria and mold and makes great uniform pockets.  I was thinking of building something Hybrid between the 3.0 and that expensive Plants On Walls design.  It think it would really good if I could find the material!  I can’t find that stuff in bulk anywhere online.  Craft stores only carry small sheets.  I need a big roll!  Anyone know where I can find this stuff? Cheap?