Hey guys,

The windowfarm is coming along, but now I’m stuck on which fertilizer to choose, I found these two

for the blooming period:

http://www.dampkring.nl/18535/advanced-nutrients-ph-perfect-bloom.html

for the growing period:

http://www.dampkring.nl/18517/advanced-nutrients-ph-perfect-grow.html

It says in the description that they are general hydroponic fertilizers, sounded good to me but i just wanted to run it past you guys.

Do you think these are any good? and what about amounts? I’m building 4 columns of 4 plants.

Many thanks in advance!

Tom

This is my first time with my new windowfarm.

Based on weather in Chicago, I couldn’t buy any seedlings so I went for already decently sized (~5 in.) basil, lavender, sage and oregano.

How often do you set the timer to water these? I think they said every hour for 15 minutes, but not sure if that is correct? I’m pretty nervous that these won’t grow!

Also, does anyone suggest any type of nutrients? I’ve never grown anything ever and I want this to work out!

Please help. Thanks.

Hi everybody.

I’m sure this has been discussed before, but for the life of me I can’t find the information I’m looking for.  So, I’m starting a two-column version 3.0 windowfarm with the t-joint style lift system, and I’m trying to figure out what kinds of plants to plant.  Ideally I’d like to have one column of fruiting plants, such as strawberries, tomatoes, bell peppers, and maybe peas or more strawberries.  In the other column I’d like to grow greens and herbs, probably mostly lettuce.

I’m worried about the fruiting column for a couple of reasons.  First, there’s the weight of those big plants and their fruit.  Will the bead chain hold?  Has anyone out there hung a few heavy plants like these using the #6 stainless steel bead chain recommended in the parts list?  Should I reinforce it, or what?  Mainly, though, I am worried about keeping all the plants in sync with each other.  The fruiting plants will be in the same column so that I can switch their nutrient solution to something for fruiting when they’re ready, but what if they aren’t ready at the same time?  What about lighting to simulate seasons?  Can I give all these plants the same amount of light  all the time?  And, do they have different life spans/cycles?  I’ve seen posts featuring some quite elderly strawberry plants, but can I expect my fruiting plants to keep producing for similar lengths of time?

If you have some experience or knowledge about these issues or other issues that I haven’t thought of yet, please let me know!

Thanks,

Bill

Hi. I’m at week 7 of my kit and baby plants. I had to get a grow light b/c my window only gets light from like 8-2 in the winter months and it seemed they were growing slow. Also,  I realized today I had been over nutrient-ing them, and the pH kept being up around 7.5. Perhaps that’s why I am getting the fuzzy mold on the pellets. I just adjusted the nutrients to the proper amount today and started with a lower pH solution by adding some lemon. I think they are going to take off now (I hope).

Question: when does seedling/baby plant stage and and “vegetative” state begin, and when does the fruit or bloom stage begin if you don’t have fruiting plants? I was trying to determine how much nutrients to be giving them by following the amounts on the CNS17 bottle, but I’m not really sure when “vegetative” stage begins and when fruit or bloom stage is for these kinds of plants. It says to stop giving nutrients during bloom/fruit stage so I want to be sure to know when that happens…is it just (obviously) when you can harvest stuff, or is there more to it?

new grow light

watercress

chives

lettuce

Basil

Hello everyone,

I’m a newbie from Russia, just made my first window farm from scratch yesterday, inspired by Britta’s talk on TED.com  I want to grow some rucula (=arugula) and dill, and maybe some other herbs which are quite expensive here (10 USD a kilo, 4.84 a pound).

I noticed almost everyone here uses some kind of brand-name nutrient mix, often it is in the liquid form. It seems difficult to find out the right stuff to use, since nutrient names may vary depending on the country.

So I bought some very basic stuff. One is called Nitrophoska, a dry (non-liquid) mix, and contains, as it name suggests, the following:

Nitrogen (N) 16%

Phosphorus P2O5 16%

Potassium K2O 16%

I have no idea what the remaining 100 – (16+16+16) = 52% are…

I also have another slightly more expensive nutrient powder mix which contains N 13%, P2O5 20%, K2O 20% and some B, Cu, Mn, Zn and Mg. The package says that it’s great for bell peppers, tomatoes and so on. I think I will try this one first, because it seems to me that the N, P, K are too few elements for producing tasty herbs.

Are these two mixes ok (for herbs), or should I increase/decrease some of the constituents share in the overall solution?

And a second question. I’ll be using clay pellets as soil. I could not find a clear instruction about how long does the air pump need running. Some leave it on 24/24h, while others turn it on for 15 minutes every 2 hours, and completely switch the pump off during the night (1:00 am – 7:00 am). What is the right thing to do for herbs, any suggestions?

Hello windowfarmers!

We have three 4-column windowfarms in a college dorm. The plants that came with the starter kit have been doing more or less ok (with some hick-ups), however, I have some issues and I was wondering if anyone had the same ones and what did you do.

1. Watercress is partially dry – is this just lack of water? Should I make the watering intervals more frequent? (Right now every 15 min)

2. There is some mold on chives…. How to deal with it?

3. What could be the white powder that I find on almost each pot? Is that related to water’s high pH (9) or is that just form the nutrients?

Sorry for silly questions! Thanks and looking forward  to hearing back!

Hi,
I transferred some strawberries form soil to my window farm and they started loosing their leaves and becoming brown.
This is my 2nd attempt and I don’t want them to die anymore.

Any help?

Too much water?
Not enough love? Nutrition? Light?

Hi guys. Has anyone tried DIY Eco-enzymes? The DIY method could be founded over YouTube. My question is that does it help to put enzymes into compost tea?

I have done lots of searching over Internet but the more I do the more confusion it gets. Please help me to answer the following questions. Your effort is appreciated.

1. What is the result of organic compost tea? (Microorganism, enzyme, ion formed nutrient…? Or bacteria?)

2. How long does it take to make a compost with brewing 24h a day?

3. Will the quality turned bad if brewing the compost tea for too long? Like few months?

4. What is the different between enzyme and compost tea? It seems that enzyme can be stored for ever.

5. How can I store compost tea for future uses(for a few months) if I no longer want to supply air to it.

6 is it ok to put more foods into compost tea when it’s consumed regularly? Anything need to be suspicious?

Best regards
A new windowfarms member

Hi!
My window farm is running for more than a month. The beans ( haricots) begins to make flowers. But the salad just died and my zucchini plants is sick and dry. And I’ve just seen that there is a white coat on the leaves. I tried to plant another one in soil in a little pots with a little reservoir of water and this one is in good health but the one in hydroponie doesn’t go well. What is the problem. I’m using the water of my fishtank and I add some more nutrients in the middle of the week. Since now, I’ve changed the whole tank every week.

Also my salad is not able to grow. They grow very thin and then dies
Can you help me?

Hey all,

I’m currently attending college at the University of Colorado Boulder and I am in cahoots with the environmental committee chair for the dorm I live in.  I proposed that we should use all of the awesome windows we have to build a community window farm.  If we get enough involvement we could easily split the cost among residents and so forth.

I have a few questions though.  For starters – how much is the “maintenance cost” of a window farm supporting 16 or 20 plants?  You have to add nutrients to the water at various intervals.  Is this an expensive ongoing cost, or something that can easily be found that is a minimal expense?  Also, the majority of people I spoke to so far are interested in growing primary fruit and vegetables.  Strawberries are a big hit, so we will most likely try them.  How about tomatoes?  Are they very easy to grow, or do they take a lot of effort?

I am really hoping to get the wheels turning on this project in the next week or two, so any input would be appreciated.  If I end up building it for the dorm I’ll be sure to post lots of pictures and follow up with success stories.

TIA,

Jonathan