I have a question, do any of you know where to get the net pots? I’ve tried the boeren bond, gamma, praxis and even the growsjop and a specialist in hydrophonics nearby (according to the hydrophonics specialist the net pots are outdated) so if any of you know a place to get net pots I’d be realy glad to hear!

Bram

(Ps, I know a place that sels them online but the shipping cost is like 20 euro’s)

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.

But the things that were easy were putting duck tape on the bottles so that the sunlight would not get through. And putting the pump in. And now we are putting it together, and and putting the tubes in the correct places. It is about finished and ready for the seed’s and to be put in the window!

- Olivia and Sammi

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.

I did cut off some of the dead/wilted leaves from the pea stalk, but while it’s not “leaning” as bad as it was, it’s not sticking back up yet and it’s been a week (Maybe i’m rushing things?)

Since they initially sprouted out of the growing material, I’ve been adding recommended amounts of Pure Blend Pro Grow (3-2-4) in the reservoir water (Mixing 3 – 5mL in a 2L bottle before adding to/topping up the reservoir). I don’t yet have a way to measure the PH in the water, but plan to pick up a test kit during the week. (Would an Aquarium PH test kit work well?)

Any recommendations anybody has to save my plants would be helpful!

So my question is: what substances do you use to raise the pH?

I was thinking of using baking soda – does anyone have any experiences with sodium bicarbonate?

Cheers,

Joel

im just getting started with my first window farm.  im living in spain at the moment and when i went to try and get a water pump online it would cost about 80 bucks to ship it out here.  i checked in at my local shops and i found a 100 liter pump or a 600 liter pump the later costing about 80 euro.

i didnt know if either of those would work so im wondering if anyone has any ideas on weather or not the 100l pump will work or if there are any alternatives, or maybe someone is here in spain and has a recomendation on where to get my hands on something like that!  thanks in advance.