So what does this cost me?  Let’s say the pump runs at 1 watt.  This is 0.001 kilowatts.   The pump runs a total of 2 hours a day for me.  That’s 0.002 kilowatt-hours and I pay $0.10 a kilowatt-hr.  That is only $0.0002 per day or $0.073 per year.  That is insignificant!  I probably have wasted more power in writing this email than what it costs to run my windowfarm for the year.

So if you are very environmetally conscientious and I think most of us here are, I would say don’t worry about putting an air pump on your WF.  Look else where in your life to save energy.  The biggest energy consumers in my house in order are heating, hot water, clothes dryer, refrigerators, stove, computers.  These are the places to make a big difference.

Buy the way, the power monitor in the video is a Watts Up Pro and I got from Fry Electronics for $120.00.

Updated 1/23/2012

After doing the first video I decided to open it up and see how the pump works.  http://youtu.be/4JqaQV48KFk

Basically it is a couple of PVC pipes sealed at the ends, with a bunch of holes in them for the plants. You can kind of see on the top one that we cut a hole in the end and put in clear plastic so we can see the water level. There is a drain in each pipe which you can see is attached to piping making it easier to drain when its time to switch out the water. It will also make it easier to convert to some kind of flow system if this bombs. There is about an inch of standing water in the pipes. So far, only the top pipe has nutrients as those are already sprouted.

The materials cost about $70 without doing any shopping around (not including the stuff from the hydroponics store…nutrients and the grow medium). I’m pretty sure that’s cheaper than most everything else I’ve seen on here. Right now it will hold 17 plants. The top has 11 spots for things like herbs and greens and the bottom holds 6 for things that need more room, like peas. Adding up to 22 more should be easy…just waiting to see if it will work before I spring for the investment! We made sure to space them so that the holes line up with the one above, so if we need to go with a drip system later it will be an easy fix.

The seeds are sitting in yogurt cups with this stuff we got at the hydroponic store. No idea what it is. The guy who worked there said it would work and shouldn’t decompose and throw off my water. We found these silly Trix yogurts are actually a really great size and don’t have a glued on label, so I’m eating neon colored yogurt now. I put nylon rope into the material, cut a hole in the bottom of the cup, and the rope hangs into the water. The wicking works beautifully. The top of the spongy material stuff is always damp. Two weeks in and there’s some growth.

Arugula is shown. It took off after about a week even in my chilly sunroom (it rarely tops 60 degrees, low to mid 50′s are more normal.) I’m also seeing signs of life in the sugar snap peas I put in about 8 days ago, but pretty much just huge roots. They haven’t popped above the surface yet. Other things seem like they will need to wait for warmer weather (i.e. the basil, and the tomato).

SO, my question to you experienced folks is this: what to do about lights?? I want to stay very inexpensive because I don’t even know if this wicking business is going to work. Despite my south facing window, I know I need something because it IS January, and I DO live in Minnesota (our days are sunny and getting longer every day, but its still only about 9 hours of daylight). My boyfriend thinks we can do a string of LED Christmas lights and tuck them into a smaller PVC pipe cut in half and lined with foil. Thoughts? Ideas?

Did I miss something else that is going to make me fall on my face here?

Greetz Matthias

Here’s what we are thinking (eventually this would be 4 levels):

SO, here’s a few things we considered or haven’t decided yet:

1) Hopefully this will allow the plants to access the water settling in the area below the pot without growing crazy root systems. We can trim roots to avoid them growing into the water too much and blocking water. Haven’t decided if the bottom of the pots should be submerged at the highest water level.

2) We’re thinking that at each watering it will actually get watered twice. Once to flush the system and give em a good drink, and once to refill again (if needed) and leave enough standing water to get it through to next time.

3) We anticipate it will get a bit gunky on the corners. Since these are independent sections, that should make it easier to clean.

4) We have absolutely no idea how high we should leave the water. Suggestions?

5) For the wick, we’re thinking nylon rope.

6) PVC pipe seems to be the way to go, BUT I know there are some pretty substantial environmental concerns. Any other suggestions appreciated.

7) End caps. I understand the PVC caps of the size we need are expensive. Any other ideas to seal off the ends???

What exactly are we sacrificing by not having a semi-constant stream? Are we going to suffer for lack of aeration?

Any other questions/comments/suggestions would be welcome! We’re new at this and have no idea what in the world we’re doing!

For me, the money is definitely an issue, but my main concern here is succes (i’m terrible with plants, and all my money would be wasted along with my enthousiasm if my first batch fails). So i wouldn’t mind spending some more on a couple of LED bulbs, if that helps. My first questoin, obviously: Would it? Would LEDs be better than CFLs? Or only some (type) LEDs?

When they say they’re cheaper, i assume they mean the purchase costs. How would the cost of the electricity compare?

I’m thinking about putting the entire window farm between the window and the curtain (that i’ll move a bit away from the window, into the room), but i obviously wouldn’t want to ignite my curtains until my veggies are ready. ;-> Did anybody try this? Can anybody give me advise on the distances that are both safe and good for the plants?

Do plants care about having exactly 1 day per 24 hours? I think i would prefer to turn on the extra lamps in the middle of the night when i’m asleep (adding an “extra day” to a 24 hour cycle), rather than “prolonging” the day, brightening the room when i’m still in the living room. Would they notice?

Even better would be if the light is cumulative rather than the “hours of light”. What i mean is, would the plants be fine with getting twice as much light during the day, instead of twice as many hours of light?

I’m back to pick up where I left off in my last post “What about those who can’t afford to build a window farm?” I said I was going to try and think about cheaper and easier ways of building+ running a window farm, and here what  came up with so far. I found some structural and methodological adjustments to the building process, and some ideas (that I still need to look into) for the maintenance part. I wish I had a little more knowledgeable about hydroponics though, since I have ideas that I’m not too sure would work. I’ll post’em out here though and hopefully someone with more expertise in the field can let me know what they think.

All right, so some of the more expensive tools and parts can definitely be spared. First of all, you don’t actually need a drill to make holes in the bottom of all bottles. Some bottles, like Aquafina bottles or the Poland Spring suggested bottles are horrible to work with since they have such hard bottoms. Yet, other types of plastic bottles have bottoms that can easily be cut into so if one can find bottles of this nature, a drill isn’t needed. Nonetheless, something like an xActo knife will still be needed but these are considerably less expensive than a drill (I bought one for 4 dollars).
Secondly: chains, hooks, zip ties and these things aren’t really essential either. I found that the frame (off which the bottles hang) can be made by using thin flexible wiring and your average nails. From here I’ve come up with a downsized list of essentials one could use to make a cheaper WF. This is based on a two-column window farm, equipped with three plants per column.

The Cheaper Window Farm Necessities
-6 plastic water bottles with easy to cut bottoms! Free
-2 reservoir plastic water bottles with easy to cut bottoms!  Free
-xActo Knife   4$
-a couple of nails  2/3 $
-Spool of thin (but sturdy) and flexible wiring. Comes in colors too. 4 $
-Plants  (cost depends on which you want but I got mine for 10$ tot)
-Net cups (free at your friendly neighborhood nursery)
`    -Pebbles / clay pellets???
- Air Pump and tubing?????

As is noticeable, I’m still uncertain about necessity of the last few items. I know hydroponics is all about a continuous water system, but the cost & maintenance of the pump worries me. Is there any way one could pour water through the system once or twice a day and still achieve healthy plants?
Furthermore, is it crucial that the plants grow in clay pellets or can they survive in pebbles (like little rocks one can find in a park or something)?
I’m wondering about these since if they could be spared and substituted for, the WF would cost much less. If they can’t be though, maybe one could build a non-hydroponic WF with just some dirt & watering instead.
The ‘frame’ of a non-hydroponic WF would be fundamentally the same, but without the pump and hydroponic parts. The plants could be placed in dirt and watered daily instead. What do you guys think about this?
I’ve also been wondering about possible homemade nutrients solutions since those can be expensive too. I intend to do some research on that and see. But until then, do let me know if any of you have some ideas about this stuff!

As always, thank you! Ciao

The air pump ideas looks great, but what about a zero electricity design? I was thinking about how old hospital IVs work (before they had automatic pumps). A nurse would hang an IV bag, set a drip rate and the iv would run using only gravity. Maybe we could do the same thing here? It would mean moving the “feed bag” daily I would think, but if there is an easy quick release system on the bag it would be doable. As a gardner I like to check my plants everyday anyway. If there are any medical people out there maybe you can weigh in here.

I have a student in my after school TSA (Technology Student Association) club, who wants to build one of this as an aquaponics farm (small scale with goldfish). I will post picture as I (and she) starts to build. I love this forum and idea of encouraging local agriculture! I have spent the past three days reading through this site.

The main objective of this model is to avoid the use a pump as I don’t want to use the money I’ll save from buying veggies to pay more in the electric bill

I got my inspiration from Lousie (http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/03/06/testing-a-waterclock-dripper-system-based-on-brians-plans/) a great idea to keep the tank pressure constant (hence the dropping frequency constant) is to use a float valve, but as I said, I don’t want to waste a cent, so I came up with a float valve of my own, using a bottlenose with a ping-pong ball inside, it should keep the water from falling into the secondary tank (this part may be tricky but I wont buy that float valve)

The other part of my idea is that I don’t like things hanging, it makes me feel everything is going to fall apart and I want my plant to be safe, so I decided to make shelves for the bottles, but they’re hard to make, so I thought that, If I cut off the bottom of the bottles and fold the plastic outwards, and then cut a piece of the folding so a twisted wire can go around the bottle, then the bottle itself will be its own shelf. And taking things further, If I make the same (maybe adding something instead of folding the plastic) with the net pots then I can take off every bottle with their plants without having to dismount everything YAY!! modularity FTW!!

But I’m not sure things will work out, I’m new with this, the last time I ever planted something was a carrot in primary school and I think it died, so I leave here some schematic I made with my crazy mspaint skills, so you can visualize things as I do and maybe give me some feedback on this.

PS: I don’t mind moving the water up when the tanks are empty, it’s nice to have some activity around the plants other than killing them

PS2: The whole idea is based on reducing costs, materials and work (I just can’t understand how the airlift thingy works)

PS3: I’m sorry if I’ve butchered English :O

PS4: THANK YOU!!