Hello, I’ve attempted my first window farm this week as a prototype for class. It’s been a bit difficult to find proper supplies in Hong Kong due to language barriers. Challenges and questions I’ve come across while exercising my poor engineering skills. I will be using black socks to cover the bottom of the bottles.

1. My seedlings have already been attacked twice with aphids and fungus gnats in it’s growing plugs. I had to start a fresh batch. If the seedlings are already so sensitive to the  moisture and humidity, how soon will my window farm be attacked by these pest? Anyone have experience with handling this in a humid country?

2. My tubing is too stiff to direct it away from the seedling. I’ve seen some systems using a toothpick or wooden chopstick, but my result was a moldy chopstick. I ended up using a fishing wire just to hold it down and a tape to keep the tube in place. I obviously need to find a better alternative. 

3. Reservoir problem. Due to the limited space in HK, I don’t have the luxury to have a big bottle for reservoir so I attempted to use a ketchup bottle on the bottom. I found the tip was a good way to plug the tubing in (I still need to reinforce it with plumbers tape, but haven’t found it yet).

4. Cutting through plastic was the biggest challenge.  I am not a very handy person, but I attempted to use the drill to make some holes on the bottom of the bottles but the bottom is thicker than the rest of the bottle, so I am not able to cut through it. In the end, I made a big circle but the bottles don’t fit perfectly. Any suggestions? I thought about using sticks to reinforce it.

5.I wanted to try out using water beads instead of clay pellets. Anyone have any success in it?

 

Yesterday my daughter and I built a 3 column hydroponic vertical window garden using a 20 gallon fish tank as the water reservoir. In the middle of the fish tank, I squeezed a length Of 3″ PVC tubing. I bore 3, 1&5/8″ holes into the tubing. I used this as the base for my three 6′ columns of 1.25″ PVC tubing. I used a submersible pump. connected it to 1/4″ tubing and used it to get the water up six feet. I then used Ts to try and bring the water to each column. 

It looks alright, but it has a few problems: The problems I am having: 1.The caps at the base of each plastic bottle do not drain well enough, so many of the planters become water logged. 2. I have not yet had success getting the water to all 3 columns simultaneously. 3. In addition I probably shocked an number of my plants. I’m going to play around with it, and see what I can do to improve things.

 

 

Hey guys,

I’m about to start building my first system having looked at the plans for all three versions. I have a few questions about modifications that immediately spring to mind as I’m setting up.

1) Why does the bottom reservoir cap assembly in version 3 need to be the way it is? It seems like version 2 system seems a lot more simple, is there any reason why this can’t be used in a version 3 set up?

2) Why could the hydroponic cages not be placed deeper down the bottles? That way more plants (and bottles) could be accommodated in a single column. You’d need to cut down the bottles to do, which would require a bit more modification to the system, but I don’t see why this would be too difficult.

I realize how green I am to all this, so feel free to tell me if my ideas wouldn’t work and why!

Thanks.

I have finally completed my windowfarm, and transferred my baby plants! So far it was neat watching the plants grow from seeds. I hope they bear fruit. I have 2 spinach plants, 2 different tomatoe plants, 3brocolli plants, and 3 mint plants, and 1 lettuce plant! I used the air T-lift system to get the water pumped to the top.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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?

Does the design account for dioxin release? If so, how, and by what chemical/physical mechanism?

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!

Painted some new bottles. Maybe I´ll turn my to columns into four.
After all there is some space left in the window.

 

 

 

Hi everyone from down under.

Here in Oz we we have square-ish hdpe bottles for our milk.

I have been looking at the product specks for this material and it has “hazing”  properties.

I asume this is stop the milk oxidising from sunlight.

So does anyone think that sunlight will be “hazed” enough to negate the need to paint the bottles?

 

.

 

d.3 stands for D’Artagnon’s third system . . . in case people went looking for an “official” set of d.3 plans on the site.

Anyhoo . . .

Looking through the site and through the plans I felt I wanted another option for my containers other than plastic and another growth medium other than those provided. So, taking the basic theory I struck out with my shoelaces untied and the wind in my face.

First the bottles; I used 12 oz soda bottles for a mini herb garden. I found a cool method of slicing the bottoms of the bottles off that was clean and painless. I will post the extended directions in another post. So, bottoms off, edges smoothed then I added my medium.

 

Rockwool doesn’t breakdown and they are a onetime use product. Once the roots have taken over, then what? Where does that go? The pebbles and expanded clay can be reused often, but that seems a lot of maintenance and they come with plastic baskets. A while ago I saw a news segment about a man who went in to the doctor because he thought he might have lung cancer and through some tests found he had inhaled a pea, which started to sprout in his lung.

Creepy, but it gave me a great idea; luffah as a growth medium.

 

The early version of my system proved that the luffah stayed moist and allowed oxygen to flow through the root system. Best of all, it breaks down slowly. Not too fast so it supports the root system but it can be thrown into my compost and returned in an earth friendly way. Also, luffah easier to manage if soaked briefly in water.

 

The reservoir bottle is a salvaged wine bottle sealed with aquarium grade silicon in the neck. I inserted the pump needle directly into the silicon air tube and that tube sits next to a purge valve for easy drainage. I found a simpler check valve at PetSmart and inserted it further down the line for easier access.

The bottles are strung together using a bracelet knot. Well, really it’s a bunch of square knots tied over the bottles. Tension keeps things stable.

In the earlier version of the system having the airlift tube on the outside proved messy, so I had the tube running up inside the bottles. After having to do some maintenance and fret over root invasion I returned it to the outside. The white tube is 1/4 inch  (outside dimension) pex tube and the smaller is a 1/4 inch (outside dimension) ac tube.

 

A side note on the airlift system: If the water level is too low in your reservoir then the air won’t lift enough water. I kept the level about 1.5 inches from the top edge and I chose a long bottle for this specific purpose. Right now it’s a single column system so I only need a single pump.

Next is to transplant my sprouts and actually get food for the system. That’s going to be an exciting learning curve. Eventually I want to see if I can get a piece of bamboo for my airlift tube and be free from the plastic. Here’s hoping.

Let me know what you think and feel free to ask questions. Happy tinkering!

 

d’

My Skylight T-valve windowfarm.
Those version 3.0 designs are way too complicated. I wanted to make something as simple as I possibly could using minimal materials. This is what I have come up with:

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February 26th, 2013 Update
Moved, Settled in, Got windowfarm back up, new plants started, images and new stuff will come soon, as I finalize my new design…

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APRIL 5th, 2012 Update
Ghost chiles are fruiting!, and Jalapenos ready for stuffing and wrapping in bacon

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MARCH 8th, 2012 Update !

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COSTS TOOLS & WHATNOT one|two|three|four

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• The Jana water bottles seem to be perfect, it is a Croatian brand of spring water. I like the water, they are 1.99 a bottle, but you can find used arrowhead 1.5L bottles fairly easily.
  ($0-10[$40, for 4 columns]) Bottles can cost anywhere from free to $10/tower.
• ($0) Suspended with a hook and shoestrings, you can use anything, this doesn’t need to cost anything, spend here only if you feel like trying something fancy.
• ($10) Airline tubing is 10cents a foot. I bought a $10 Roll of it, plenty to spare.
• ($3.50) T valves are a 50 cents each x7
• ($2.00) flow valves are a 50 cents each x4
• ($10-20) the pump was pretty darn cheap, repurposed from fish tank… 3watt, super cheap, and costs about 20-80 cents a year to run on the timing i have.
• ($8.00) 3″ net pots were 50cents each x16
• ($30.00) 2x Timers were $15 each, 24 hours of 15min intervals for water.

TOTAL FOR SETUP: $113.50 for 4 towers
Additional costs(& ongoing expenses); nutrition, lights, paint if you don’t have it, electricity is about 25-75cents a year for the air pump, lights are costlier.

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Seeds I’ve Started (for windowfarms or my garden outside):
http://store.myorganicseeds.com/ <— Hot Peppers !
http://seedrack.com <–Cool and interesting plants

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Oregon Sugar Pod Peas – Pisum sativum
Green Onions

PEPPERS – Capsicum
SUPER HOTS 300,000 to 2million Schoville Heat Units
Trinidad Moruga Scorpion – Capsicum chinense
Sunrise Scorpion – Capsicum chinense
7 Pot, Barrackapore variety – Capsicum chinense
Habanero – Capsicum chinense
Bhut Jolokia – interspecific hybrid (mostly C. chinense with some C. frutescens genes)

Low – Medium Heats (6,000 – 100,000 SHU)
Marbles – Capsicum annuum
Black Pearl – Capsicum annuum
Jalapeno – Capsicum annuum

TOMATOES – Solanum lycopersicum
Roma
Brandywine
Yellow Pears
Green Zebra
Black Krim
Speckled Roman

Purple Tomatillos

Butternut Squash

GREENS
Rouge d’Hiver Lettuce –
Arugula –
Dwarf Blue Curled Kale – Brassica oleracea

HERBS
Purple Basil – Ocimum basilicum
Cilantro – Coriandrum sativum
Sage – Salvia officinalis
Oregano – Origanum vulgare
Thyme – Thymus vulgaris
Chamomile -Matricaria recutita
Chives
Catnip
Lemon Balm

Did anybody try using .5L bottles instead of the 1.5L Bottles? From what i’ve read, i would expect that space is an issue for only some plants.

If the vertical space is the first problem, i could cut off the top of the bottle and space them further appart, put the plant higher in the bottle, so their effective root space is just as big as in the 1.5L bottle.

The advantages would be space, taking less sight in the window, and less weight.

The disadvantages, i don’t really know, there could be many, but i would assume they’re all space-related.

I’d like to think this would make a kick-ass mini-window-farm for maxing out cress and other really tiny plants.