beginning of spring in Vienna / Austria

tomatos in a windowfarm in Vienna

other plants in a windowfarm in Vienna

 funny garden

air-water-lifting video on youtube

have a look at a windowfarm in Vienna ( started Okt. 2011 )

…more pics and videos 

ciao, Joha 

Today, I met a group of people in my class. I just opened a class in which I teach about city farming.

It is an open class for free and we call it OPEN UNIVERSITY WITH WISDOM.

I introduced the window farming ideas and everybody really were interested.

 We tried to make the hanging bottles for plants.

We shared many ideas for the project.

After many weeks of trying to get the watering system to work, and the whole garden to stay up, I have one question: what do I do with all this mint!

Finding all the parts for the window farm wasn’t all that easy, since being in Canada doesn’t give me as many options for ordering online (unless I want to pay a lot in shipping). Most parts were pretty easy to find, but the following took some work:

1. Pump: Petsmart had a 4 outlet pump. The tubes and check valves were separate though.
2. Rigid tubes: do-it-yourself wine store. Get the distilling tubes (about $3) and cut off the bend on the top and they are the perfect length.
3. Hydroton pellets and plant food: I just got these from the garden supply store. Just tell them what you’re doing and they will know what type of food you need.

Some tips:

1. Use the nestlé bottles with the “waist” in them. The 3″ cups fit perfectly in them. These are what the v3 plans ask for. Perfect!
2. Use 2L bottles for the bottom reservoirs. Otherwise you will have to refill very very often.
3. For the 2L bottles cut off one foot to make the water return hole and cut off 2 feet on the opposite side to make the hole to fill it with water easily and insert the rigid tubes.
   

   There are 5 feet on a bottle. Cut off one to have the plant bottles empty into. Cut off the opposite two for the rigid tube and big "filling hole"

4. Use a modified needle system or the T system for the airlift. It makes removing the reservoir bottles possible for cleaning without having to undo air tubes. And it works better IMHO.
   

   Rigid tube with some vinyl tube on the bottom. The needle is inserted where they meet.

5.  Use the plant velcro tape to secure things together. Zip ties are not a good idea because you will have to take things apart during the building process and maybe for cleaning.
6. I bought a grow light. Just a small one. It probably helped during the winter. I bought a small fluorescent tube and attached it to the curtain rod above the window.

Video

My first windowfarm

Here’s a video of the system working. It sounds like a horror film because of all the wind outside and the pump running. The pump is not really that loud in real life. I just transferred most of the plants the day before. The mint has been growing for a few weeks and it grows really really fast. Faster than I know how to use mint. What do I use that much mint for anyway?

I’d love to help more people with their garden, especially if they have questions about growing at a northern latitude.

So this is my second season of window farming. I usually start a month before last frost so I can transplant to my outside garden and get a nice yield by summer. I may just keep the organic cherry tomatoes inside and see how they do. Anyone have specific upkeep tips on these? PH balance, watering intervals, etc.? First time growing cherry tomatoes in the window farm. Last year I started Romas and then transplanted.

Also, check out my friends organization below…big things for the better(local community sustainability through urban agriculture/leadership in the school classrooms). Raleigh, NC represent!!

Hey everyone!

In these last weeks we have been searching, ordering, building and fine tuning parts to get our system working as we designed it to be. And here it is! We put a short video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1G3CJ22gG8&context=C4d3f039ADvjVQa1PpcFNS065J4nWUFHmogFHkh8gP7hRdM0lE5yc=

The principle is completely the same as the ‘conventional’ windowfarm. The pictures below explain where we positioned the parts.

The challenge was to create a matching design in our living room, since it is hard to look around it. It is there! Therefore some of the technical/functional parts had to be redesigned. Next to that we added some features to maintain ease of use. These were:

• Easy to reach herbs / plants when taking care of them or harvesting: To reach the plants we are able to lower the construction by a system with pulleys, exactly like we described in our last post.
• All parts that are in contact with water can be cleaned easily: The reservoir exists of several parts. The bottom part is made of a piece of plastic that were made with a lathe machine. There are two O-rings that seal it to a rainwater pipe that serves as the reservoir. All the connections to the water and air are built into the bottom part.
• The reservoir shouldn’t look too bulky: By using a rainwater pipe (with a diameter of 70 mm) as reservoir it gives a slimming effect. On top of the reservoir we placed a specific part (for connecting water pipes to each other) where we put in a plant. This is also the last plant that gets the water before it drips back into the reservoir. This way it looks like it serves as a vase. A rather big vase, for (at this moment) a pretty small strawberry plant though…

Another difficulty was to get the water all the way to the top. We did not only have a large height to reach ( approx. 3 meters = 10 ft. ), but it also runs in an angle (45 degrees). By tuning the system we did it. The parameters to take into account are:

1. -Length of tube that sucks up the water in the reservoir
2. -Water level that rests on top of the T split.
3. -Amount of air pressure
4. -Thickness of tubes

We added some pictures to get an idea. Enjoy!

Thijs & Nienke

I just installed a new windowfarm in my girlfriend’s studio, I’ll post some updates as they seem to progress, same design as my loft farm.

This is a 3 bottle Tvalve airlift with several herbs
Cilantro
Purple Opal Basil
Rocket (Arugula)

They will be grown organically with the General Organics Nutritional lineup.

I’ll be adding another tower to the other side, eventually.

I made a video of the current set-up! Also I started using a desk lamp as supplementary lighting, and today I swapped out the old airlift tube for a new one. The old one was manky and terrible-looking. Everything is going very nicely, even though the lettuce is still a bit leggy. I will post more pictures soon.

Oh, and my first squash blossom occurred today.

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.

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.