Hi guys, some time ago I posted this explaining the Ebb & Flow mod I came up with for a Windowfarm http://our.windowfarms.org/?p=21596.

Well I’m happy to say that my 1st seedlings are in now and so far it’s going well.

Left we have my column, four 1l Buxton water bottles suspended by natural string.To the right are the 2 reservoirs. I haven’t painted them yet as I don’t have any nutrients in the water yet. The one on the left is the one that does all the work, the one on the right feeds it. I keep the right one at a lower pH then the plants require and as the other one’s levels go up and down it sucks over a little at a time helping to keep the pH levels down.

Here are my little basil seedlings. They germinated in the root riot cube they are sitting in now. I decided to use gravel because its pH stable (I left the gravel in pH 6 water for a week, no change) and free (taken  from my garden, washed and sterilised).

The siphon system is working very nicely. I was really worried that the 1st time I left it alone it would fail and flood my kitchen but no puddles yet! I have the pump running 15mins on, 30mins off. This gives me about 1 flood cycle an hr which is just what I was after!

If you don’t know what ebb and flow or flood cycle are then look at the 1st video on the post I linked to at the top. This is the big difference between my system and, so far as I know, all other Windowfarms out there. All going well I expect it to be an improvement on the original idea but you never know until it’s had a good testing. Speaking of which, a few people were talking about giving my Ebb and Flow design a go, anyone done it yet? Love to hear from you if you have.

Oh and one last thing worth mentioning… As you can see from the 2nd pic the window isn’t in the sun which will be a problem for vigorous growth. The garden you see behind the reservoirs there, I’m planning to build me a shed with a greenhouse attached to it and that’s where this sucker’s going to end up.

That’s it for now, any comments greatly appreciated,

Ed.

My driver has found a good source of used PET Aqua bottles. They can be bought from the local Tukang Pemulung or recycling folk. These people make a life of recycling Jakarta’s trash and reselling it. They have a lot of bottles but often they are slightly squashed from being in a big sack. I think they will have the Sport tops as well. The driver Mr. Ulung bought the rest of the bottles for ~ $0.10 each. He also bought a water based Pilox white paint which actually dries fast. I have all my bottles now. Thanks a lot Ulung!!!

Hello,

I have finally finished my windowfarm and …

instantly buil a second one.

In about two weeks, I’ll build a big one at school,

but I haven’t even figured everything out for my own windowfarm.

One of my questions: How can I easily make my own nutrients?

Thanks.

hey guys,

i have my window farms all set up but i am having trouble with water dripping down outside of the window farm so i am wondering if there are any recommendations on how to keep the water from dripping everywhere.  any advice is appreciated!  thanks

I just got my first window farm set up and now need to figure out what to plant in it!  It sounds like growing plants from seed is a project on it’s own, so I think I want to start with plant starts from a garden store for my first round.  I’ve read that it’s possible you just need to make sure to get big enough plants that will survive being transplanted, and that I should rinse off the soil using warm water… but is there any other advice on doing this?

- do I need to get every last little bit of dirt off the roots?

- do I need to be careful about how the roots are situated in the pellets?  Or do I just set the roots in and cover/ surround them with the pellets?

- is there a certain size/ age of plant that is most likely to survive a transplant?  bigger the better?

Any tips or advice would be appreciated! thanks

- David

Greetings from Denmark

I am going to make a window farm soon (as soon as my budget and time allows for it) but I just have a few questons

I don’t really have a lot of space, but I can’t make holes in my walls so I will have to make do with a floor standing model…

My idea is something like this:

The pot will be standing on the floor and I will then place to sticks to hold the  bottles… The top bottle will then be used to add water (I can’t afford a pump at the moment) and there will be a plant in the pot (possibly strawberries or flowers).

My big question is then: will the plant in the pot benefit or will it hurt it if I let the water and nutrient drip into the soil? Or should I put something else in the pot instead of soil?

I was thinking of having loofah as the growing medium in the bottles, as I have seen someone (D’artanan perhaps?) here having, as that seems to be something I rather easily can get a hold of but do someone have a better idea?

And the plan for plants in the bottles? I think strawberries, tomatoes, basil, peppers or the like…

So does anyone have any tips for me? Or an idea of a great plant to put in the pot?

I’m sorry if my english is bad, but it’s just not my first language…

Hi windowfarmes!

I’m a design engineer student and I’m currently doing a project where I’ve decided to focus on glas and it’s possibilitys.

And by coincidence I heard about windowfarming.

Since my project is mainly about how to create something out of recycled glas, but with less energy needed, I thought that windowfarming might bring my project to a new level.

Since you guys are more experienced when it comes to growing vegetables etc. I would like to ask you  about this.

Do you think there’s any difference regardin growing vegetbales in a colored glas compared to a non colored?

Would it be possible to grow things efficient without using a pump for circulation?

I´m sure I’ll come up with more quastions further on

Grateful for any help given

/Rikard

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.

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.

I’m a community animator at the Centre for Social Innovation here in Toronto, Canada. Just started the proposal process to see if folks here are interested in trying to install a little window garden. They host a weekly salad club, and i figured this would be a very “innovative” way to make sure there’s always fresh herbs around. At $30, don’t know how they could disagree. I’m a little worried about being able to find all the parts, since some of the brand names are different up here, but should be fine.

http://socialinnovation.ca/