Hello Everyone,

My name is Pieter and i’m an Architect living in Antwerp Belgium.

Last year i’ve build a 2 string 8 bottle windowfarm and have been experimenting with it since than.

the system works great so i started trying to grow some plants, i’ve tried with seedlings grown on cottenwool and with full grown soil plants, but all they did was die.. I used different types of nutrients, (not specific for hydroculture, so maybe thats the problem) the timer i use is set on a quarter per 1.5 hour.

After killing a lot of plants finaly ONE tomato plant didnt die, and grow quiet big.. but thats before the winter, now its dead as well..

now the wetter is getting better i want to make a fresh start and could use some help with my farm!

what are the tips on good nutrition, which plants go well with one and other, what frequency do i need to put the timer on, etc etc

can someone here help me with that?

thanks!

I had lots of trouble with seedlings, and especially the part where you don’t kill them. I tried some (not all) of the rituals involving paper towels, rock wool, sand, coconut hair, etc. The seedlings need attention about twice every day, just to check the humidity. If the soil/medium dries out for a couple of hours, the seedlings die. Given the fact that i’m often away for a day or so, this caused a lot of infant plant mortality.

Then one day i had some unoccupied pots in the farm and some of the seed packages come with LOTS (hundreds?) of seeds, so i just threw a couple of seeds in the farm directly. What did i have to lose, right?

We’ve been told to give the little plants pure water without nutrients (or they’ll “burn” – anybody else ever thought that sounded strange?), they need some structure to attach to etcetera. Turns out we’ve been lied to (or i/my plants have been very lucky)! ;->

I had basil, chives and hemp (not the smokey kind), grow like weed (eh…) by planting them directly in the clay pellets in the window farm. Granted the chives didn’t live very long, but neither did the ones i sprouted in my “seedling school” and transplanted later. I just filled the cups with clay pellets, up to 1 cm under the upper edge, threw in some seeds and then fill the last cm with clay pellets.

Perhaps there’s stuff i’m not taking into account (one of the reasons for me to report here), but i do think it brings these advantages:

• no growplugs needed,
• no growplugs, soil or dirt in the farm (which started looking really gross/muhsy after a while)
• no extra attention required for the seedlings, the windowfarm will auto-water
• no painfull transplantation (even being very carefull when moving little plants into the farm, i’m sure they hate being moved!)
• speculating here, but i think the plants adjust to hydro quicker when they ‘grow up’ in hydro.

I bought some Jiffy pellets for seed starting but when they are soaked there are lots of particles in the water. I’m worried the particles will clog my system, even after the roots develop. Anyone with advice about the best way to start seeds? What plugs should I use?

It’s been almost a year since I lasted posted on here. Now I’m back with a little video update below. I bought a new air pump because my last one back siphoned due to the fact I didn’t have it elevated higher than my reservoir…oops! The new one has four air outlets, so I’m thinking of setting up a horizontal system on the other side of my window sill.

I’m open to any advice or comments! Here’s the video update link…

http://j-memory.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/mov015.mov

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’ve just built my first WindowFarm system a little while ago, and I’m starting off by trying to germinate/grow an Avocado from seed. At this point, I’ve got it to JUST start cracking open (approximately a 1.5 weeks later). I’m using gravel as my growing medium, and i’ve got a slight, but steady trickle of water running through my system and directly over the seed.

I did a bit of reading on the favorable growing conditions of Avocados, and the article I was reading said that they don’t do well in saturated environments because they are susseptable to root-rot and other bacterial diseases when waterlogged.

Has anyone else had success growing an Avocado with hydroponics? Am I panicing for nothing, or should I abondon ship and try starting a different plant?

Thanks!

~Riley

Hello everyone!

I’m new to hydroponics and I just built my first system the other day. This is a really fast and easy system, it took me about an hour to build and I used only parts that I already had at hand. The materials that I used are:

      - Medium sized plastic pop bottle

      -  Small plastic flower pot (similar diameter as the bottle)

1.       - Metal coat hanger wire (for the hanger)

      – Standard fsh tank tubing, check valve and T-joint (two of them)

      – Air pump (just a cheapo one I had from an old fish tank)

      – Coarse gravel (as my growing medium)

      - Electical tape

      – Calking (to seal the connection between the tubing and the bottle cap)

One thing that took me a little bit was to get the airlift system to work out. I just had pictures of other people’s to go by without much explanation of how it works. Turns out it is just a simple syphen that is supercharged by an air pump. Pretty cool. I fond that it will work as long as the T-joint that introduces the air into the water stream  is below the water level within the pop bottle. Knowing this, I put it pretty low down on the column.  Right now I have the water level about midway between the bottom of the flower pot and the top strip of electical tape. You can kind of see it, but the tube running up the left-hand side of the column is my water level gauge (note that due to displacement by the pot and gravel, it’s a bit higher inside the column than what’s shown on the gauge…figured that one out the hard way… *splash!*). I’m starting out by trying to hatch an avacado seed. It was sitting in water for about a week before putting it into my gizmo, in which it’s been for about 4 days now. It’s JUST starting to crack open. So I’ve got high hopes.

Currenlty I have no added furtilizers or nutrients in my system. After some research I will will begin experimenting with that.

My next challange will be to try and think of a way to quiet it down a bit. Right now it sounds like that slurping noise as if someone’s blowing bubbles in chocolate milk through a straw. Being in my bedroom it gets a bit annoying. Anyone have any ideas?

Did a quick energy use calculation. Turns out this is a super cheap system to run!

- The air pump has a power rating of 1.5Watts. By staying on 24/7, this gives us:

- 1.5 W/1000 = 0.0015 kW                         – 24 hrs/day * 365 days/year = 8760 hrs/year

- 0.0015kW * 8760hrs/year = 13.14 kWh/year

- 13.14 kWh/year * 0.12 $/kWh (at the worst of times) = $1.58/year        **Here in eastern Ontario, Cananda, we pay

Pocket change!                                                                                                                         about $0.12 per kWh

~Riley

Hi!

I received my lovely windowfarm with seeds! I haven’t yet put it together, as I figured I should first have the plants (grown to at least some degree), before worrying about it.

Well, following Britta’s very helpful post, I pretreated my seeds, planted them in grow plugs, put them in an egg carton with some water, which was then put in a salad box that is transparent and can close, to preserve humidity and heat.

These are the results so far:

During 24 hrs they were covered and dark. These are after three days, I was very excited. Every day, the light has been on for about 18 hours total: As much sunlight when available, artificial light when sunlight is unavailable (we had a few cloudy days). I’ve ventilated and made sure the plugs are humid, but not moldy, and one week went by…

Then today:

All the previous seedlings are dead (not overnight, they yellowed three days ago (probably after the day I put them on direct sunlight), started falling two days ago and I removed them today). The new one is thai basil.

Any ideas as to what I might have gone wrong and what I can do to have better results? Also, can I reuse the plugs with new seeds?

Thanks!

UPDATE ON OCT. 1

Looks like the problem was indeed the humidity. I’ve added more water and the 2nd batch of seeds (which were not pretreated) seem to have done better.

When should I transfer them into the windowfarm and add nutrients?

Thanks!

Hello, I discovered this website through TED, where I watched a talk by Britta Riley about window farming. As soon as I heard that window farmers have been able to grow strawberries that fruited for 9 months under low-light conditions, I was hooked. I am eager to get started on creating my own window farm.

I looked at the instructions for window farms 3.0, here, briefly. My first questions regard the use of plastic water bottles.

I did a quick search on the internet and found that plastic water bottles are typically made of Polyethylene terephthalate, commonly referred to as PETE or PET. Then, remembering hearing that plastic water bottles should not be reused, I did another quick search on what compounds are released when water is stored in plastic bottles for “too long” and what accelerates the rate of release of such compounds. The main thing I found was that dioxins are released by plastic water bottles, and doixins have been found to cause breast cancer in women, but I’m sure dioxins do not just affect women. I did another quick search on plant up-take of dioxins, and found that there is substantial literature regarding this issue as a health concern for humans. Not knowing the chemical structure of dioxins or their properties, I do not know what kinds of chemicals can be used to either chemically alter the dioxins into a safe form or to “sop up” the dioxins so plant up-take is reduced or eliminated.

My questions, then, are:

Is it safe to have plants growing in PETE bottles, with water constantly running through the bottles, extracting dioxins?

Is there a safer plastic to use than PETE, or another composition overall, for example glass?

Please do not hesitate to answer any of these questions (especially the last one) with something technically challenging (for example, using glass bottles would be difficult because cutting the glass would present a challenge). I will consider technical limitations at a later time.

Thank you!

I´m new in this, I´m 20 and I want to learn more about this proyect, unfortunatelly I haven´t researched as many things as I would like to, but I want to learn. I´m from Mexico and even though we are a great nation I have to say that we have a very big problem, chemicals. My girlfriend and I are trying to produce perfect vegetables, fruits or even plants, but I need your advices, what should I do? What should we buy?… We don´t have lots of money so please tell me a cheap way to produce our organic life.

Thanks!