Hi there!

It’sstillmy first season and the plants seem to be happy.With one exception: The cucumber leafs show small white to transparent spots almost since the beginning.

While the plants grew (and the still do) that was no real concern to me but yesterday a saw that one of the older leafs starts to fade from the edge, see  second picture..

I see no bugs or anything like that.

It doesn’t appear to be a kind of fungus but I may be mislead here.

Image 1: http://aquaponik-forum.de/attachment.php?aid=480

Image 2: http://aquaponik-forum.de/attachment.php?aid=484

Any help or hint is appreciated

Thanx, Markus

Hi !

Eight weeks ago, I presented you what I now call my sailboat windowfarm. Seven weeks ago I was presenting you my clay pot windowfarm.

Then, I explained in detail my pH imbalance adventure, telling you that I lost several plants in the process. Now, I’d like to show you the survivors. Here they are. First photo : My sailboat windowfarm suffered a much smaller scale pH imbalance. Its growth was interrupted and one of the pole beans lost two leaves to it, that’s all. On the first storey : 2 pole beans, second storey : 2 nasturtiums, third storey : 2 cherry tomatoes.

Second photo : a close-up of the biggest leaves on the pole beans.

Third photo : my clay pot windowfarm is still half empty and the spinach and thyme will get out soon. The two center columns are connected to their own reservoir. They are designated home for all flowering plants and may receive a special blooming nutrients formula. The two outer columns are designated for leaf crops only.

Following photos : watercress started from cuttings, surviving lettuce, blooming peas and baby cucumber.

I have been browsing many a seed catalogue, and I am sure that I’m going to buy a bajillion different kinds of seeds. Just to grow one plant of each variety… so…

Let’s swap seeds!!!

Is anyone else interested?

I seem to be a little impatient. I can’t believe the system’s been running hardly more than a week, with the pump arriving two days ago.

So, here we go:

The pump will need a proper cover against the sunlight, but I haven’t figured out an elegant way to make one yet. If only I had black aluminium foil lying around …

The mini cucumber has decided to rear its head, after careful deliberation.

wild tomatoes

The yellow wild tomato is well ahead of her red cousin in the background, but for a week I think the height they’ve reached without artificial lighting and in a window facing east is acceptable.

butterwort

And to finish off, my watchdog. No real dog – I leave that to Lorne – but a butterwort, charged with devouring fungus gnats, mosquitoes et al.

Cheers for now.

In my search for seeds and seedlings online (because nothing was available locally), I came across 2 companies that had excellent ratings and variety:

Burpee had the most robust and interesting varieties of herbs, vegetables and flowers; and I like the company’s storied history. Reasonably priced as well. They also deliver seedlings as well as seeds and sell excellent seed starting systems:

http://www.burpee.com/

Seeds of Change is an good certified organic option:

http://www.seedsofchange.com/

Moveable hanging windowfarm we made for demos

These plants were all started from seed in February. The lettuce loved the cool early spring. Look at how bushy that blackseeded simpson got (mid left). There are also cucumber (the yellow flowers at top left), okra (maple-looking leaves mid right) , green beans (top right) kale (bottom right) and cherry tomatoes (bottom left), jalepenos, and Japanese Eggplant (bottom right big leaves) in this system. The cherry tomatoes,  jalepenos, and okra are just now ripe in early August. Beans keep coming- super tasty, crunchy, and sweet. The lettuce went to seed and started tasting better about after about 2 months of churning out georgeous new leaves constantly when we picked them.  Aphids and a weekend when I left the pump off (OOPS!) killed the eggplant. The cucumbers were a real mystery. Like Marilyn and James Dean, they died a young tragic death after a short, but full life. Read their sad story here. Someone else please try cucumbers!

The cucumbers were a real mystery. Like Marilyn and James Dean, they have thus far all died a tragic death after a short, but full life.

We had about 10 of these georgeous exciting northern cucumbers. It was a little unrealistic to think we could grow such a big fruit in a windowfarm, but we figured we’d try and just find a way of supporting them when they got big. And they did get big. We had them trelliced around some cross-wires made of string.

They all produced a lot of flowers and after we pollinated them with a paintbrush, we had tons of 1″ long baby cucs.  The plants themselves all looked very healthy. 

But then all of the sudden the plants would die when the fruits were cornichon-sized. We think maybe we didn’t have our fruiting/flowering nutrient solution mix right (??). 

Someone else please try cucumbers, get it right, and let us know how to do it! I’m drooling at the thought of some homegrown apartment cornichons! 

Moveable hanging windowfarm we made for demos

This demo model was all about portability. It has much in common with a standard reservoir setup, but we needed to be able to move it out into the main space so we could show people how a windowfarm works while also being able to put it back in the window most of the time so it could get light (and grow HUGE!!) .

This model came before the move to sewer pipe reservoirs. We used the same suspended tupperware reservoir technique we used in the first prototype that we built in my apartment’s kitchen window.

You can’t see it in this picture but the “plumbing” is detachable and can be moved separately from the plants. We suspend a tupperware reservoir above this windowfarm and use a bucket on the right at the bottom to recapture the liquid and house the pump. We drilled holes through the side of the tupperware container up top  and attached individual tubes to the reservoir (tricky plumbing!). The individual tubes dangle down into the top of each column. The “recapture” tube you see at the bottom attached to the bottom dowel drained into a 5 gallon bucket that also housed the pump (on the right, not shown). The pump in the bucket is attached by a long tube to the reservoir up top, closing the loop. 

We made it portable by creating a removable frame for the bottle columns. We hung one dowel rod from another dowel rod with tension cable, creating a loose hanging frame. Then we hung each strand of bottles from a dowel rod at the top using the fishing wire technique. There are holes in the recapture tube, into which we insert the tube at the bottom of each column. We tied the recapture tube to the bottom dowel with zip ties.

 It was so exciting to just pick the whole thing up and move it down the hallway! It’s light enough for one person to carry even with these big plants.

These plants were all started from seed in February. The lettuce loved the cool early spring. Look at how bushy that blackseeded simpson got (mid left). There are also cucumber (the yellow flowers at top left), okra (maple-looking leaves mid right) , green beans (top right) kale (bottom right) and cherry tomatoes (bottom left), jalepenos, and Japanese Eggplant (bottom right big leaves) in this system. The cherry tomatoes,  jalepenos, and okra are just now ripe in early August. Beans keep coming- super tasty, crunchy, and sweet. The lettuce went to seed and started tasting better about after about 2 months of churning out georgeous new leaves constantly when we picked them.  Aphids and a weekend when I left the pump off (OOPS!) killed the eggplant. The cucumbers were a real mystery. Like Marilyn and James Dean, they died a young tragic death after a short, but full life. Read their sad story here. Someone else please try cucumbers!