My basil is coming along, slowly but surely. The uploader keeps tilting this photo so it’s on its side.

Cherry tomatoes. They’re also soldiering on.

I’m worried about my lettuce, which is sort of scraggly and sad-seeming. I think it might be the constant temperature changes in the apartment, as the weather here in Alabama has been cycling between mild and cold. I added another cube with some snow peas in it. I think they might help provide some shade for when it warms up again and stays warm. Any advice would be very welcome.

The pattypan squash is my favorite. It’s vigorous and seems very happy.

Advice for my scraggly lettuce? The pump system still isn’t perfect. I really need waterproof tape, but I think it’s gotten better since I increased the size of my reservoir and cable-tied the intake tube to a rock to keep it at the bottom.

I’ve got a east facing window in the Sunset district of San Francisco and I just started growing Oregano, Freckled Lettuce and Peas! I’m very excited and thankful to this whole community for helping me get up and going. I’ve posted a picture below (pre-planting of lettuce and peas).

I just purchased a timer for my air pump and I’m trying to figure out, well… the timing. Right now I have 3 starter plants, 3L of water to 3.75mL of FloraNova7-4-10 nutrient, a pH right around 7.0 and blues eyes and blonde… oh sorry, wrong forum. I have been watering on a 1 hr on/30min off cycle which, as far as I can tell, has not caused any serious natural disasters. My timer has 20 on/off settings.

So first question, how long can I let these guys dry out for? I’ve heard some people turn their pump off overnight (such as my anti-bubbling couchsurfers yesterday). I know this can vary a lot, but anyone have any advice?

Second, how often do I need to change out my water/nutrient solution? When it evaporates? Every full moon?

Thanks again everyone, what an awesome resource you have created!

Eric

This was about a week after we set it up. We started the beans & cucumbers from seed in a little greenhouse on top of the fridge. The top two pots are cucumbers and the bottom has 4 green beans.

We hung the pots with some hemp we had in our craft surplus & made the trellis out of the hemp & bamboo stakes. I’ve even made a bow and arrow out of the bamboo!

This is how the middle & bottom pot get watered. There is a piece of bamboo shoved up there to keep the tubing straight.

Here’s the reservoir, made from a cereal tupperware we got at Target & some ducting tape to make it lightproof. We took the little hinged pour spout off of the lid and ran the watering and drainage tubing through the opening. You can also see the timer there, right now we run the water pump for 15 mins every 2 hours from 6am to 6pm. As the plants get bigger we might have to adjust the schedule, but for now it works out.

We use a water pump we had around the house and it works great until the water level in the res gets down to about 25%. It’s a good reminder that it’s time for a refill without having the pump run dry.

Our first sight of beans!

Beans, beans….

….and more BEANS!!

Okay, enough beans. Here’s our first cucumber flower!

We’re getting a lot of male flowers, just waiting for that female! Well, that’s what we have so far. If you have any specific questions on what we used or how we use it leave a comment or send a message & we’d love to share!

Happy Growing!

-The Sanders

this was my first try, previous summer outside in my garden, when the frost period is over ill try and make a similar and bigger system in mu living room window.
the ropes on one side in a water reservoir(also a bottle) and  go op into a hole of the plant bottles,
it works pretty good, don’t need to give more water than once every 2 weeks or so, i tried “upside down”  tomato’s here.

We plan on helping out spreading the WindowFarm idea through Colorado. By hopefully sometime be able to set up some time to traveling to elementary, middle, and high schools and presenting our WindowFarm project we made from scratch. Using tools that anyone can buy from a local store and such. In order to do this we have created a mobile WindowFarm system (as you can see in my profile picture) to help maneuver the WindowFarm around. Here are some other pictures as well of our just 1-3 bottle system we have set up for it.

Here as you can see are some microgreens and some zuchinni growing and yes we are switching out the zuchinni to a smaller plant. We also have the main tubing right in front as well.

Here you see the set up we have with the main air tube, we have the straws for covering the chains we used so they dont rust.

We have a ten gallon tub filled with liquid nutrients. And you can see the setup we have in the water of our siphening system.

Here is I say a rough draft of our mobile WindowFarm. We are looking to simplify it down a little bit but this is just a start for now. The mobile system main use is to use for travleing to school to school without having to carry everything. It can also be used to move from window to window if necessary and I’m sure many other reasons. But I’m hoping for everybody who see’s this to spread the word so we try and kick this mobile system off the ground.

If any questions please email me at fcchavez10@yahoo.com, or message me on my profile.

Lettuce Catalogna – 58 days old

 edible flowers – 58 days old

Links:

klick here to see more pictures of the of the young plants in a windowfarm in Vienna

air-powered waterlifting with music

First column made from .5L bottles

My window is not tall. I barely have 90cm (roughly 3′). If you already tried to lay out a windowfarm, you already know 30-35cm (1′) is needed per level. On the other hand, choosing small bottles (.5L San Benedetto in my case) allows placing a level in every 19cm (7 1/2″). I have to choose smaller plants, though.

I haven’t wanted to invest a lot, and my first model barely reached $50 mark (10 000 HUF, in the local monopoly game). I bought all plumbing mats from the local aquarium shop, but a day later I decided 4mm ID tubing is not enough: I replaced airlift first, and then all water tubing with 6mm ID. This thicker tubing allows shorter loop (45cm – 1 1/2″), better drip flow, and top airlift splitting works evenly.

Top of my first column

I used chains to hang the system, which allows easily place bottles with some string and hand made hooks.

Using small bottles also means you might not want to put net pots into them (however we found small, 55mm – 2 3/16″ diameter ones, they fit nicely), but cutting holes  into their bottoms is much easier.

Besides, I’m not a big fan of cutting/drilling big holes into the bottom of bottles. An average DIY person drills three 6mm holes anywhere instead of cutting a single 1″ one to the thickest part of the bottle. My recommendation is this: don’t daisy chain bottles, but let the water flow through an airline pipe. Drill 6mm holes into every bottle bottoms, and drill 5mm holes to each bottle cap. Then, glue 4mm airline tubes into plant bottles’ caps, and a 4mm airline extension connector to the reservoir bottle’s cap. I tried silicone glue too, but I recommend using a glue gun instead.

Airlift tube shows how much water my reservoir has

I started off with spearmint, which filled two bottles. Then I germinated chives seeds in kitchen towel, which now happily sits on top.

Later on I decided to extend my original, more-or-less proof of concept column. However, I ran out of space (putting water next to the radiator is not fun). Fortunately Ken came up with the idea of splitting airlift tube to water two columns at once.

I wanted to try 1.5L bottles too, but keeping the same layout. I ended up cutting bottles in half after painting. Fortunately Jana bottle has a small waist where I can fasten the lace. While I still haven’t wanted to use net pots (for some reason I couldn’t even buy one which fits inside a 1.5L bottle), but I could repurpose some remnants of mosquito net to keep clay pebbles inside.

Small tomatoes, and coriander are placed there already, but strawberries are still too small, I planted germinated seeds to growing pots into coco choir. The lucky ones are expected to be removed to the top of my new column in a week or two.

I also made a video showing how it works.

It’s the end of day two and I’m seeing some germination signs in my basil and lettuce. I think the squash is also getting started. I’m trying to leave the tomatoes alone, since I am trying to not be obsessive, but I think hope they’re starting to germinate.

It’s a four-bottle window farm, with a pump set up similar to that of V2.0. I think the needles are starting to rust already, and I need to buy replacements, as well as better tape for waterproofing.

I kind of like to just sit next to it and listen and watch. I’m already thinking about adding a second row, with snow peas and maybe strawberries.

enough emphasis on the design of the windowfarm in the community so far.

In my opinion a windowfarm only looks good in your window when it covers the whole window so it looks like a curtain. Have you ever seen a cuarter curtain or a half curtain?

In my case I had to cover a window of 1,90 m x 1,20 m ( 74 inches x 47 inches) as I am living in a pretty old house build in 1882. As I wanted to cover the whole window I needed 4 rows with 6 Bottles.

I first build a 2×5 Windowfarm inspired by the design Ramas post  but I was not happy with the rod sticking out of the middle. So I used metal cabels and ziptied also the tubing to these cables. This also gives me and the possibility to apply my lights next to the bottles. In the end my farm delivers the water up to 2,30 m. Impressive right?

I have not filled up all the bottels with plants as I am traveling to Mexico this        February to bring some more special mexican vegetables seeds with me.  My goals is   to grow all typical mexican vegetables like koriander and different chilies in my farm.

I really liked the experience of buidling this farm and would like to share my experiences with like minded people. If there is somebody here from and around Munich. Please give me a shout I would like to organize a little farmer meet-up.

Anybody here that has experiences growing chillies or year long?

Here I have opened up a German Windowfarm Group on Facebook. Friend me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/andreaskopp and  I invite you in.

today was a productive day in our window farm project, we got the planters all set up in the wall…

We are having some difficulties finding rockwool grow cubes and hydroton in Canada at a reasonable price. We can’t find it in major retail stores and on ebay the shipping is really expensive, any ideas where we could buy it?!

We appreciate any help,

Carolina & Ricardo.