I work at a grocery store here in florida, and i noticed that the produce deartment throws away a massive amount of decent fruits and vegetables just because they have been on the shelf for to long. my question is, would it b worth it to try and recycle all that waste and try and turn it into nutrition for the window farm system. Honestly im new to all this kind of stuff so i dont know if there are any problems with acidity and such. I just think that there has to b something to do about it, because this is just 1 store, and i imagine that it is the same for most if not all of the other grocery stores. Also i talked to the manager and they would almost always be willing to give it away for free. They just have to get approval b/c of health and potential legal stuff.

Hi guys,

I’m a new window farmer and have some questions and thoughts I’d like to present to you all, regarding how we can extend the window farm project to individuals and communities that do not have the resources engage in this movement like the rest of us. I’m very excited by the potential the WF project has to alleviate some of the larger social and environmental issues we are faced with. Yet as I was building my own WF I saw how the currently available designs require many more resources than I imagined.  The tools, time, and money I had to put into building a WF made me realize how individuals without these resources cannot participate in this movement. Drills, air pumps, nails, paint and so forth, come out to be pretty pricey when added up and I feel as though this issue radically diminished the WF’s potential for large-scale change. This is especially true when considering the fact that the earth is rapidly urbanizing and soon most of our growing global population will live in urban settings.
I recently read Planted of the Slums (a paper on future global urban development by the distinguished academic Mike Davis) that shocked me with the expected outcome of current global trends, into thinking how it is critical for projects like the WF to reach out to underprivileged communities. Davis states: “cities have absorbed nearly two-thirds of the global population explosion since the 1950 and are currently growing by a million babies and immigrants each week, [furthermore] the global country side has reached its maximum potential and will begin to shrink after 2020”. The expected outcomes of these global trends will be “ the burgeoning of new megacities with populations of 8 million, and hypercities with more than 20 million inhabitants”. Smaller cities and ‘citized’ towns will also grow, as they will be expected to absorb three quarters of global population growth. This makes me think that there will be an unimaginable amount of people living in tight city spaces, and most of them (as Davis proceeds to point out) will be of lower-income status.  Davis in fact states that we are headed towards ‘a mass production of slums’ as already one third of the global urban population lives in slums. Many of the environmental, social, and public health related issues that will rise from this are freighting to think of.
THIS IS CRAZY, and if we really want projects like the WF to effectively counteract the negative social and environmental consequences of wild urbanization, than we need to do more. I’m curious to hear what you all have to say about this, and what measures you envision we could take to spread WFs and things of the sort. I’d late to make it clear my concern is not only for slums, but for all lower income communities in general. I think its crucial that every one finds ways of self-sustainment and self assertion in our times of incredible dependency on global, capitalistic markets. And the procuring of food should be a first factor in this.
Currently I am myself working on trying to envision cheaper and easier WF set ups, as I am also talking with my school about setting up an organization with funds to reach out to underprivileged immigrant communities in NY state. I’m hoping to be able to aid these politically and economically disenfranchised communities to re-affirm themselves by producing some of their own food.
I’ll post again soon and meanwhile I hope to hear what you guys have to think! Ciao for now

I just came across this site after watching the presentation on TED.  From what I’ve seen, this place and the ideas here are fantastic.

I wanted to share a system I build and have been using successfully.  Having seen the systems on this site, mine looks huge and clunky!

I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, which as most know, is very hot and dry throughout 9 months of the year.  I have a small yard, but no usable soil for growing a garden.  I don’t know much about gardening, but its something I’ve wanted to try.  My goal is to have a year round system that I can use to produce herbs, lettuce and other greens.

My system is a free standing, recirculating pump based system.  It has a reservoir full of nutrient solution that gets pumped up to a system of PVC pipes.  The water flows through the top pipe and then down to then lower pipe, and so on, until draining back into the reservoir.

Each pipe contains four grow sites, spaced about a foot apart.  Each grow site has a net pot filled with clay pellets.

My Hydroponic System

Before planting, I had started some beans, lettuce, tomatos, green onions and peas inside in a growth medium that I could easily transfer to the netpots.  You can see these small starts already planted in the photo above.  Below is a photo taken several weeks later.   I had since put a “green closet” (small green house) around the structure to help control temperature and filter out some of the intense sun.  The green house is made out of PVC pipe, made rigid with wood bracing and covered in 7 mil painters plastic.  In the photo below, you can see that the tomato plants are taking off, peas are doing ok and the onions and lettuce are still slow to get going.

Progress!

All of my starts did not take off.  My beans did not survive at all, and all but one lettuce plant died.  I attribute this to planting too soon, before the starts had developed good roots.

Here’s a shot of the root system for one of the tomato plants:

Tomato Plant Roots

These roots actually started to become an issue.  They started to grow so much that they would block the pipes and cause water to back up in the system.  A little bit of a “hair cut” fixed that (for a little while…)

It's a jungle in there!

The above photo was taken just a week ago.  The tomato plants by far had grown the most.  So much, that I had to remove a few plants do to their roots blocking up the pipes, and to allow for the other plants to get more light.  I have since added string support for the plants to cling on to.

We’ve been using the green onions and lettuce to make salads for 6 (two adults and 4 kids) several nights now. Below is photo of one of those plants, which we’ve been cutting leaves off of for a while.  They just keep growing back…

Lettuce

Below is shot that shows how dense the roots get on the tomato plants.  This is a pot I removed to thin out the garden.

Dense roots!

All in all its been a good experiment, and I can’t wait to build my next system, refining my ideas.  Hopefully the information on this site and its users can help me out.

Pete

Left my plants unattended for a week.  Plants sure bounced back when finally watered on the 7th day.

Its playable in HD 1080p, so be sure to turn up the quality setting!

Windowfarm Timelapse

Oh I am SO excited to have this plan in place, and it’s far more affordable than I thought it would be!!!  I built a raise bed garden outside a few years ago and really caught the bug!  Together with my Parents (we rent out their upper, I have a medically complex kiddo- had to sell my condo ) we thought about putting in an aquaponics farm, but our city stonewalled that one   So, I came across this and was so excited to get it going as we have SO MANY windows!!!  The plan is to put 4 columns in each room listed- my room, Parker’s room, Kitchen (but this is going to be a 6 column possibly in the picture window!), and great room.  That hits all angles, north, south, east, and west.  Yes, there will be supplemental lighting where applicable.  We do live in Wisconsin, so the concern is if we need a heating element in the winter time.   I just need to find the darn bottles!!  Has anyone had success contacting like a recycling center?  Has anyone used 2L bottles like for soda I hate soda, but I’d buy it for the bottles!  And then what size netpots do you use?  My grow cubes should be here today!  I’m getting seeds and such going this afternoon.  I want the whole thing built and up atleast in the kitchen by two weeks from now.  Our growing season in WI is alittle more than half over, but if we can have fresh veggies and herbs year round, it will be incredible!!!  I’ve had quite a bit of success in my outside garden, though, this year is a hard one.  I’m used to hand pollenating everything, because we have no bees.  (We are actually considering keeping bees!) So, any help would be greatly appreciated!!!

Oh, and Will Allen and Growing Power is about 15 minutes from my house   Check out his website because I’m going to reach out to him and Sweet Water Organics for any help they can give or good nutrient mixes!!

I finally finished and transplanted everything into my new Penta-Tower.  This tower is once again constructed of wine bottles, though rather than simply tying it up (simply.. haha), I used S-hooks for suspension similar to my portable tower (which is also working and planted at this point).  The bottles are cut to half length, because I was able to borrow a tile saw, which made hacking the bottles into equivalent lengths more consistent, and maybe slightly quicker (though clean-up was a bear and I got multiple glass slivers in me).  Using the less fragile left-over pieces, I constructed a diffuser to replace the air stone in the reservoir.  Filled the area where the farm is with reflective film, except for a little window, in my window for onlookers to see as they walk by (I made a little sign directing them to this wonderful site as well).  The notable differences between previous systems and this system are depicted below: larger reservoir with coupled fog culture/ DWC, five columns rather than three supplied by the single lift tube, all copper/brass lift tube and drip ring, and 100% cotton cheesecloth instead of net pots.  Also, not really noted or depicted, but my lift height is consistent up to 6′ at this point with the reservoir only half full.  I have also listed off my plantings from last night, which seem to be loving to be out of the starter trays I had had them in.

Glass, copper, & silicone

This is before I hung the reflective film. And after, large table box used as a mounting frame for reflective film back drop.

And third is the view from the street, it isn’t really that orange, weird white balance thing going on, I will probably re-take this one.

A ‘drink basin’ that we had laying around, the seams began to rust a little initially, so I sealed it with the same silicone that I had used for the diffuser.

The air delivery tube is kind of balanced on the base of a beer bottle, and against the diffuser.

Central hole punched for the lift tube to exit through.

Also cut five 3″holes for net pots as a DWC/ Fog Culture in the same pattern as columns.

Punched five pin holes over the columns in a copper ring, I bent it around the base of a Gran Marnier bottle.

Used a compression coupling T-joint to attach to the  lift tube, which I bent gently around a bottle.

These tiers are in order from top through bottom.  I will list the plants in clockwise order starting from the back center.

1:Pea, [empty], Lettuce, Lettuce, Lettuce

2:Pea, Broccoli Rapini, Purple Basil, Basil, Basil

3:[empty], Broccoli, Edamame, Pencil Pod Bean, Pencil Pod Bean

4:Red Pepper, Eggplant, Red Pepper, Eggplant, Yellow Pepper

5:Armenian Burpless Cucumber, Roma Tomato, Bean Tavera, Lettuce, Edamame

These pictures show the fog culture/ DWC in the reservoir basin.  The glowing is the lighting on the nebulizer, a few LEDs, blue, I am hoping it won’t cause a problem, or they will grow algae or something.

CW from back center: eggplant, cantaloupe, butternut squash, watermelon. In the fifth, I am trying to germinate a mango pit.  But it will likely become a cucumber or pole bean.

I will try to update this post soon with some more complete and current shots of the nook and system, but at the moment, I am just trying to get some of the pictures I already have from construction, and the new plantings up here.

For other and more in-depth information on this you can refer to my external blog at: http://anuttahwindowfarm.blogspot.com/

For progress on my transplants, other seed starts, seedlings, gardens, etc. you can visit myFolia at: http://myfolia.com/gardener/JamesNutter

Namaste, and Keep on Farmin’ you wonderful participators out there.

I have been browsing many a seed catalogue, and I am sure that I’m going to buy a bajillion different kinds of seeds. Just to grow one plant of each variety… so…

Let’s swap seeds!!!

Is anyone else interested?

I’m thinking about a completely new design using tetrapak juice cartons instead of bottles and having them against the refrain(is that the right word?  The bit of wall at right angles to the window… the interior surround) around the window, just opening them up at either end and inserting one just inside the next, so they form a long square section tube, and filling them with hydrogenate then inserting the plants  through holes cut into the front wall of the tetrapak.  My problem is I need some way of attaching them to the refrain (or a backing board) that is strong and secure but also can be removed when a plant has been cropped and that old root ball needs removing and the tetra-pack may need replacing…. any ideas?

I was greatly inspired by this aquaponic living wall:

Instructions here: http://urbangardenmagazine.com/2010/07/build-your-own-aquaponic-mini-living-wall/ thanks to  dean moriarty for bringing that to my attention.

I’ll try and get some pictures up tomorrow to illustrate what I mean with the tetrapacks.

This is one of our “1 cut” samples that I keep at work. It’s literally a bottle cut in half and used as a planter. The water is poured over the top, then filters through the coco-peat. It collects at the bottom and the process is repeated as often as you feel like doing it. We try to do ours at least once a day but find that we do it way more often because it’s that easy. We have done some variations of this version but I don’t know that the results have been any better than the simple “1 cut” version.

You can get more context and images here… http://kylerco.com/ but for the purpose of this post here is a link showing the “1 cut” bottle. http://cl.ly/ac99d3e9a43adf2373ee

Thanks for all of the comments and ides thus far.

Cam

kylerco.com

I’m looking to build a living wall to go up the sides of a window out of tetrapaks like this:

By cutting one at the top like this:

One at the bottom like this:

And one at top AND bottom like this:

Filling them with hydroginate and joining them together like this:

Then running a windowfarm drip feeder through them like this:

…Cutting holes for any plants as and where needed. My problem is that I don’t know how to attach them against the wall so that the weight is supported but they can be removed/replaced/refreshed when necessary. Any suggestions?