I still do not have a windowfarm. Too many other projects, I guess. One recent project was to show how a gravitational vortex power plant works for the local mini makerfaire. There was no electrical socket near my booth so I moved outside and used a 15 Watt solar panel connected to a 12 volt DC bilge pump to work my model. The vortex power plant model developed a surprising amount of torque so maybe if scaled up it could work a little mini compressor for supplying your airlift needs? An electrical engineer said that neither the solar panel or the bilge pump would be damaged by low wattage in the morning and evening through the system (the water prevents thermal runaway) and this was confirmed by the company who made the bilge pump! So, now, what we need to do is either adapt that system to produce air under pressure. (a little trompe) or find a low watt 12 volt dc compressor that will not burn out in low watt situations. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPh4GymUGSg
Brian

MANY THANKS, DAISY, for your inspiration.  Just after I took down my aquaponic system Daisy’s post came on.  This is how I worked it out for my window with the soil and the bottles I have available.  I do need it to make things easier for now.   After knee surgery I hope I can get my aquaponic setup back in place.  The red drinking cups, filled with soil, have holes drilled in them so that the water leaches up through the soil and into the roots.  The plants are low enough  so that water can be poured into the cut off pop bottles without stepping on a ladder.  The plants are spearmint - basil - a small aloe vera plant – thume – greek oregano and hot n’ spicy oregano.  It looks like this soil uses more water than my aquaponic system.  Interesting!!!   Happy windofarming.  Sylvia Indiana USA

Hi, I will like to know if anyone knows how to make a system of irrigation such that by using valves or other materials and a storage of rain water it can irrigate the plants while I am not home. If anyone knows of  websites that might help me I will appreciate it.

This is all I can get on right now.  Pics later.  THANKS BRIAN WHITE.  My son saw Brian’s drawings and made this setup for my aquaponic window.  This is an improvement over my setup I posted on 4/27/12 named “Windowfarm drawing”.

Husband Dave and I were in town when one of my lines fell and leaked on my carpet.  OH NO  I pumped the water from the carpet, then let it dry (3 days)  I watered by hand at this time and was too tired to fix the lines back up.  On the weekend son John came over and put them up for me.  Being stronger than me, he got the system so it can handle a heavier load (4 lines) now, and the drip lines are fixed stronger too.  OH – John said the distances seemed important and it was very important to let the water seek it’s level in the supply lines befre he turned the air pump on.  I’m proud of my smart son who was patient enough to make this work for me.

I have 5 cups with seeds I started myself and the rest are plants I purchased – rinsed the soil off roots – and planted them in the clay pellets.  It feels good to raise some of my own food.  (save the earth)  *****THIS IS A VERY HELPFUL SITE TO ME*****

I hope someone can be helped with sharing my experience.  If many MANY others had not been so helpful in sharing their work I might have given up and gone beck to one column.  Thank You —  Sylvia – Manchester Indiana USA

I´m new in this, I´m 20 and I want to learn more about this proyect, unfortunatelly I haven´t researched as many things as I would like to, but I want to learn. I´m from Mexico and even though we are a great nation I have to say that we have a very big problem, chemicals. My girlfriend and I are trying to produce perfect vegetables, fruits or even plants, but I need your advices, what should I do? What should we buy?… We don´t have lots of money so please tell me a cheap way to produce our organic life.

Thanks!

Hi this is my first post here. Sorry for my english, but i need your help.

i’ve been running my  own windowfarm for at least 3 months and now i have a tasty lettuce.

But right now i’m concerned about the bacterial colonies growing on all the airlift tube.

Biofilms growing on the tube

Since i’m a microbiologist, i know the health risk related on having biofilms on food supplies and related surfaces,  so i need to avoid  them in next trials and change the tube system. i dont know if this are benefical bacteria, but if they are forming biofilms, they could make in the bottom the perfect habitat  for facultative anaerobes like E.coli and Salmonella

i think the tube material could be related to the huge  ammount of bacteria attached to the tube walls.

i can try to add natural disinfectant previously but i think this won’t resolve the problem in long term.

Does anybody have the same problem? any idea?

I believe that the WindowFarm (WF) community is unanimous in the concept of reducing waste (PET bottles), and growing food to reduce our carbon footprint. In this context, I think we should also think of utilizing the most ubiquitous and damaging plastic product there is — the plastic grocery bag. In the Philippines, it’s one of the most abused packaging material. You can see it anywhere and everywhere. The streets are littered with it.

Objective:

1. Use discarded plastic grocery bags;
2. Use less energy and tine to set-up the hydroponic contraption; And finally
3. Use the tried and tested air lift system to deliver nutrients.

I hope I can count on the community for suggestions.

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!!

I would like to know more about the availability of wild genomes of popular fruits and vegetables because of the quality of nutrition from the commercially hybridization of available plants are not as good. I do not know a great deal of Botany but I have learned that most if not all of the fruits and vegetables we eat here in the US have been  hybridized to genomes that are better marketed and more profitable for the industrial food companies sacrificing nutrition and taste in the process. I see no reason why we can’t get these wild genomes of plants to grow ourselves, I personally want to grow strawberries. I uncovered this article about strawberries that had some very interesting information confirming my suspicions. Here are a few exerts from the article of interest.

The quantity and quality of bioactive compounds possessed by fruit is strictly 
related to fruit genotype (Scalzo et al., 2005a; Wu et al., 2006; Du et al., 2009).

Genotype is also very important in determining for nutritional and nutraceutical 
quality as already described in a large number of works carried on the evaluation of 
fruit nutritional parameters (Scalzo et al., 2005b; Du et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2002; 
Borochov-Neori et al., 2009; Hakkinen and Torronen, 2000; Capocasa et al., 2008).

Of peculiar interest is also the difference found among cultivated and 9
wild species. Wild species have higher level of nutritional attributes when compared 
whit their respective cultivated varieties, but at the same time they have a loss of other 
important fruit quality traits, such as for example fruit size and firmness. Thus, wild 
germplasm has an important role as a source of genes to improve fruit nutritional and 
nutraceutical quality (Wang and Lewers, 2007)

The link to the PDF article;

http://openarchive.univpm.it/jspui/bitstream/123456789/324/1/Tesi.Diamanti.pdf 

If anyone has any information, incite I would be very interested to learn.

These make very nice net pots that fit into 2 liter bottles.

To make the coffee can into a shape that will fit into the 2 liter bottle you must re-form the plastic. To do this I created this vacuum forming device made from a plaster mold of the bottle  and a cheap paint bucket and lid. Steps to make this;  1) make a form to surround the part of the bottle you want to copy such that you leave a 1″ space surrounding the bottle to enable the vacuum to form around the entire bottle mold 2) mix up a few lbs of plaster to pour into the mold 3) extract the plaster mold of the bottle and drill holes threw it 4) fit the mold threw the lid and caulk to make a seal 5) cut a hole in side of bucket to allow a wet vac hose to fit tightly to make he vacuum.

How it’s done;  take the coffee can and cut the top off to get the height you want for your net pot, then turn your kitchen oven on to 300 degrees and hang the plastic coffee can in the oven.  I took all my oven racks out and made a aluminum square tube to fit in the oven in the same slides the racks fit, then taped the coffee can on four sides like straps to suspend the can inside the oven. When the plastic is at temp it will sag slightly, at this point it is ready to be formed. Quickly turn on the vacuum and remove the can from oven with gloves on and slowly set the can in the former.  The plastic coffee can will quickly take on the shape of the bottle form, leave it in the form until it has cooled to touch. Once you remove it room form and let it cool to room temp, you can cut what ever slots or holes you wish to complete it’s transformation into your net pot.

This may seem like a lot of work to cut out the cost of a few dollars per store bought net pot, but consider the carbon footprint your conserving. The cans are already delivered to you, they are dual purpose and would normally end up in landfill or part of the massive flouting islands of trash out in the ocean and your conserving the plastic industry that made it in the first place.

These pics are of my prototype window farm that I’m making now, I expect to be producing cleaner parts the more I make but IMO this isn’t bad for the first one. This technique is quite useful for making things out of plastic, I can see vacuum forming re-purposed plastic bottles into whole pots in what ever shapes you need.