our.windowfarms.org

1. Sign Up. If you would like to be a window farmer or just participate in the discussion, please register for the site using the gray bar at the top of the page.

2. Get Set Up. Once you have registered and signed in, more options will appear in drop down menus on that top gray bar. Under My Blogs, roll over Window Farmers, and click ‘Dashboard’. You’ll find links to edit your profile.

3. Explore the Site. On the homepage, you can browse by clicking on featured posts with pictures on the left, recent posts, the categories on the top right, the tags in the tag cloud on the right, or by members down below the fold.

4. Post Something! This whole site is one big forum and we use blog posts to start new threads. Tell us what you are up to. Post a question or a concern. Under My Blogs on the gray dropdown bar at the top left of the page, roll over Window Farmers, and click ‘New Post’. Don’t forget to Categorize it and, if you wish, give it a few Tags. This will help later users find your posts and will help the community answer one another’s questions.

5. Engage with other people on the site. Comment on Other People’s posts or send people messages.

6. Questions? If you are confused about how to use the site or have suggestions that will make the site better, don’t hesitate to email britta@windowfarms.org

window farms

Window Farms are suspended, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible food gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials. This site is the online community of window farmers, where we share our development processes and design innovations.

These vertical gardens, located in windows throughout the cityscape, are intended to inspire others to design and implement their own window farms, creating a network of urban food production. Signs in the windowfarms will challenge people to create their own and direct them to a website where we can all share photos, plans, designs, and information. Together, we can derive viable methods for growing food under the local conditions of our own homes.

To learn more about Window Farms, see windowfarms.org.

To learn how to build your own, get started with How-To instructions, or start reading posts from other window farmers throughout this site.

Please share your design process with the other farmers by joining the site and sharing your design and development process.

If you would like to join the site, please get started here.

For press inquiries, please check out some of our large downloadable images here and write to britta@windowfarms.org for interviews.

This system can churn-out a salad per week, but it is definitely not the place to start if you are a beginner. The window farm described in this How-To is a reservoir system. A water pump on a timer periodically pumps water and liquid nutrients from the bottom reservoir to the top reservoir. There are small holes drilled into the underside of the top reservoir. Small drip emitters with valves let out a constant drip of water and nutrients into a column of plants. Each plant sits in a grow medium in a net cup (a perforated plastic cup commonly used in hydroponics), within an inverted plastic water bottle. The cap of each water bottle has a hole in it so that the water and nutrients can drip from one bottle to the next, from the top to the bottom of the column of plants. The bottom-most bottles are connected to tubing that takes the water and nutrients into the bottom reservoir, where it sits until the pump turns on again.

Water pump systems are a little more finicky and are susceptible to clogging. Most of the community has moved toward the airlift design so unless you are very comfortable with tools and handy, we suggest trying the airlift how-to.

IMPORTANT ELECTRICAL SAFETY UPDATE!!! Please remember to include a drip loop on electrical components of this system. Make sure the cord hangs down below the outlet and then goes back up to plug in. Make sure you do not have an outlet directly under your reservoirs.

Download the PDF of the How To instruction guide here. Please note that we ask anyone who downloads the how-to to register on the site and to come back and post as you build, not just when you’re finished. You give back to the project by participating on the site. Bring questions, ideas, results of your testing various processes. This is a mass collaboration on the R&D of these systems.

These are UPDATED instructions that show you how to make a ‘mini’

1 hour build- The easiest, cheapest, smallest windowfarm. Gets you started on hydroponics ASAP! This version is designed to be easy to assemble for folks who want to try out a windowfarm but are not quite ready to build the structure needed for larger windowfarms. This system grows three plants and costs less than $30. The basic configuration includes three bottles that act as plant holders, a bottom reservoir to capture/hold water, and tubing to move water through the system. It also utilizes a small air pump that uses water displacement to elevate the water up to the top of the system, where it can then trickle down through each plant.

Download theNew PDF and give it a try! Check the comments below for updates and to read about other folks’ experiences before you build (remember this is an ongoing R&D process so don’t think of it as a product!!)

Please note that we ask anyone who downloads the how-to to register on the site and to come back and post as you build, not just when you’re finished. You give back to the project by participating on the site. Bring questions, ideas, results of your testing various processes. This is a mass collaboration on the R&D of these systems.

IMPORTANT REMINDER ABOUT ELECTRICAL SAFETY: Remember to include a drip loop (position the cord so it hangs down below the electrical plug).

Here’s the Old PDF if you need it for some reason.

We can find our own solutions to our own environmental issues!

The whole point of the windowfarms project is to collaboratively research and develop innovations together that make windowfarms easier to install, more elegant, cheaper, more efficient and better looking.

There are as many ways to participate in the reserarch and development process. Some people prefer share their results after they follow an instruction set and design their own rootcover solution or decorate their windowfarm in a unique way. Other people like to test new ideas others propose but have only had the time to test in one dimension. Some people contribute by creating controlled experiments around a particular aspect of the system, such as how far away a CFL bulb should be from lettuce befre it grows stringy. Others want to take the system in a new direction or swap out components for something new they find. Still others prefer to comment on other people’s ideas from the standpoint of convenience (call it market research) or critique how-to text (marketing?).

Any way that you would like to participate is welcomed and is a valuable service for all of us!!

If you intend to innovate or swap out components suggested in the how-to’s, we have found that swapping out any parts of the liquid circuit (pumps and reservoirs) means taking on a bit more complexity than switching out other parts of the system (lights, suspension, bottles, tubing, net cups, hydroponic media, etc.).

Here is a sneak peak of the Window Farmer’s Preparation for the Benefit and Mixer at Eyebeam.

You’ll see that we have approximately 75 water bottles drying after being painted to cover the roots of the plants.

The installation will be approximately 15′ x 15′ and will hang in the large gallery window.

Enjoy!

The person in the image working on the water bottles is Julius — a pioneer!

To see more images check out our Flickr

We’ve figured out a way to suspend the water bottles from eachother, eliminating the need for fishing line or any other external means of hanging each bottle separately. Basically, the bottom of each bottle is drilled with a hole that the neck of the bottle above fits into perfectly. Screw the cap on, and you have a surpisingly strong connection. Check out more about our process here: http://hughswindowfarm.tumblr.com/

Britta and I finished the first window farm prototype in her kitchen window in April. The system includes a pump in a bottom reservoir which is on a timer, to pump about 3 gallons of water/nutrient solution up to the top reservoir. The liquid then drips through the columns of water bottles that hold the plants.

We’ve listed each component below, and some of the lessons we learned.

The main components are:

• Reservoir 1 (a 5 gallon bucket on the floor)
• Water pump (orange)
• Reservoir 2 (a tupperware container on a shelf above the window)
• Large diameter tubing going up to fill Reservoir 2 (orange)
• Small tubing to and from each vertical component
• Clamps
• Water bottles
• Net cups with clay pellets
• Covering for roots
• Fishing Wire to suspend
• CFL bulbs and covers
• Light Timer
• Air Pump
• Second timer for pump

Scroll down for more details about each component. We have listed each component and ordering information on this site.

Reservoir 1 is a 5 gallon bucket on the floor with water and nutrient solution

- 500+ gallon per hour pump of high quality which makes it quieter. You can go with a cheaper one if like this it will only turn on 3 times a day.

- There is a timer on the pump which turns on for 2 minutes every 8 hours. It fills Reservoir 2.

- Along with the pump, the reservoir also has an aquarium air bubbler in it to keep the water aerated or moving so it does not stagnate. This thing is a problem because it is loud. We should find quieter ones because it stays on all the time.

Parts in this area:

• 5 gallon bucket
• Water pump (500 gph)
• Timer for pump with at least 3 on/off settings per day
• Aquarium air bubbler and airline tubing
• Tubing that fits water pump fitting (to go to reservoir 2)
• Extension cord
• Nutrient solution mixed with water

Reservoir 2 above the window

- The reservoir is filled via the tube coming up from the pump in reservoir 1. The size of the tubing was determined by the fitting on the pump.

- The reservoir itself is a tupperware container we got at the hardware store. In the future we would look for something made out of thicker plastic so it is easier to put the plumbing connections into. This plastic was thin and difficult to drill clean holes into. Also, technically this should be an opaque container since nutrient solution should not be exposed to prolonged light, but we choose clear so we could see the nutrient level and color.

- We used brass pipe fittings to connect the tube to the reservoir. They included the barbed brass and yellow rubber you see on the right of this photo. You cannot see the other side of the fittings, where we used the female pipe fittings to tighten the connection on the inside of the reservoir.

- There are 5 tubes which come out of the reservoir.

- They are clamped down really hard so that the 3 gallons of water in the reservoir takes the whole 8 hours to drip through the system – so the plants are getting a constant drip.

- We’ve realized now that instead of clamping, the better solution would be to use much smaller tubing – probably 1/8th inch – to slow the water flow – instead of needing the clamp the tubes.

Parts in this area

• 5 gallon tupperware container with lid
• Shelf and brackets to mount container on above window
• Barbed connectors to connect reservoir to tubing to plants, rubber O-rings and aquarium sealer
• Clamps (although these might not be necessary if your tubing is much smaller than ours)

Water Bottles

- The five tubes from Reservoir 2 extend into the top water bottles.

- The water bottles are suspended by 15 lb fishing wire tied to simple hooks drilled into the top of the window.

- The plants are in net cups, in clay pellets, resting in the water bottles, which, because of the ‘eco-shape’, are the perfect size for the net cups.

- Some of bottles have their caps on, with some holes drilled in the caps for the water to drip through. Another design we experimented with here has plastic martini glasses duct-taped to the bottles which have had their tops cut off.

- The water drips down through each plant and then to this tubing at the bottom, which brings the water solution back to the bucket reservoir.

- 6 100 Watt CFLs from Home depot in normal sockets. This may be overkill. However, in general the closer you can get the lights to the plants the more growth you can generate.

- Light Timer with 5 sockets goes on once a day and turns off once a day

These are some of the things we would change in the next version:

• Find better plumbing components
• Ian suggested using a chin up bar to suspend everything from at the top of the window to not have to drill the hooks
• Gabriel points out that a cheaper alternative to a chin-up bar might be some threaded pipe from the hardware store. They sell metal pipe cut to length and threaded on the ends, which screws into plates that are screwed onto the window frame. So some holes in window frame, but only in two places vs. a series as with hooks. Very strong.
• Remove the reservoir at the top and experiment with the pump so the water can go directly to the plants
• Play with the lighting design so less light bleeds into the apartment and out the window
• Find more flexible tubing for the bottom so that there’s not that large tube going to the reservoir
• Use containers other than water bottles
• Find a way to use coconut coir so it doesn’t clog the system
• Look into using copper
• Pump- cheaper? Non-electro?
• Air pump- quieter? Non-electro?
• Tubing adapters- easier?
• Reservoir 2 attachments
• Root covers- elegant?
• Containers- alternatives, less labor
• Wiring- Less messy
• Clamps- cheaper
• Suspension- Less invasive, more stable
• Aeroponics?
• Microgreens setup?
• Lights- positioning? use less light by sensor switches? filtering less harsh on eyes inside? less light pollution outside?

Britta and Ian finished installing a window farm in the Eyebeam window gallery last week. The system includes 2 4″ PVC pipes at the top and bottom, which act as reservoirs. Drip emitters in the top pipe release slow drips of water down 6 columns of 5 plants. The pump turns on for a minute every 4 hours to fill the top reservoir. The beans are big, the okra seems to be turning into a tree and the lettuce is just monstrous. We have got to eat it soon.

Britta and Ian installing the window farm at Eyebeam.