I am a student teacher who would love to build a lesson plan or unit using the window farms.  i will be teaching hospitality and tourism and think this would work on so many levels.  i’m looking for some more imput on how to start the process.  thanks

HELLO

I am so excited to start this project at my school in New Jersey.

I went to college visit, saw this project, and fell in love with it.

My school is pretty good at students to be aware of environmental issues. We once had this competition of coming up with the ideas of conserving energies at school, etc.

Anyways, I am soo excited to start this project!!

Hello Out There!

I just purchased a kit for our classroom and was wondering if anyone has done this project with 2- 3 yr. olds of course with parents helping?

Hi Everyone,

I’ve really enjoyed reading all of the posts and getting an idea of what people are doing.  I’ve finally just completed building my first column, following the excellent directions provided by WindowFarms…Version 3.o…they were quite clear and the photos were very helpful.  I do plan on building three more for my apartment, but since this is the first one I just wanted to test it out for a bit.  My apartment has a large south-facing window, and so I did not build an additional light column because I don’t think I’ll need it.  I did, however, follow the example set by others and cut two holes in the plant bottles instead of just one, so I can grow two plants per bottle.

I will be out of town for a large remainder of August, and so I’m reluctant to start growing anything yet, since I don’t know if I’ll be able to replenish the water reservoir on a timely basis.  However, that means I have some time to plan what I want to grow, and I’d like to experiment with companion plants.  Does anyone have any suggestions for good pairings?

My goal is to have a 4-column window farm in my classroom this year (I teach 9th grade Biology, among other things).  I’m hoping to help my students build it themselves, as well as guide them in designing their own controlled experimental set up for the window farm.   If there are other teachers out there who have done this sort of thing, I’d love to hear from you and find out what worked, what didn’t, etc.

When I first saw this website, I thought it was great on so many levels. My group of friends store food ,and growing some indoors year-round fits in with that concept of thinking about the future ,when the country may suffer food shortages. As a 6th grade teacher, I am going to have the students build a class windowfarm of their own.It will be fun to see how they troubleshoot! My setup  is not an airlift system. I am experimenting with a reservoir on top that drips down 3 containers to a receptacle at the bottom. I’m using a perlite/vermiculite  mix without net cups that I prime with water first. The drip is very slow and I hope it will stay wet enough until I get home from school to recycle the reservoir. I won’t have plants in the farm until I get the drip speed down. I want to thank the person who suggested using a 5 gal. reservoir on a single outlet pump. I have a double outlet pump for my next windowfarm which is an airlift. I couldn’t find needles, so I used a ” T’ connector with a single outlet and regular airline for the airlift tube. The middle of the “T” is connected to the check valve and air supply, the other ends are connected to the airlift tube. The “T” comes in where the needles would have been. I’ve been able to get 5 feet of lift with this “make-do-with-what-ya-got” setup. Thanks to everyone for  all the great ideas and comments and to Britta and company for the movement.

THE PROBLEM

It’s a daily miracle that enough food is grown, packaged, transported, & distributed to feed more than 3 billion people in cities worldwide. A massive industrial food complex has been set up to meet the demands of our fast growing, increasingly urban populations. My engineer/inventor grandfather played a role in creating this system, having designed the technology behind the modern grain silo. However, toward the end of his life, he became a passionate environmentalist and expressed to me a concern about his life’s work: the complex systems his generation had set up turned out not to be as healthy for ourselves or the rest of the natural world and too few people comprehend or are involved in the decisions that operate them. The same industrial food complex that keeps us eating cheaply has ravaged the natural landscape of the countryside and compromised the nutrition and food security of almost every community, urban or rural. He said my generation would face the challenge of rethinking some of his generation’s designs.

Let’s figure out how to help cities feed themselves & improve the American diet.

These hypotheses need to be tested and proven with your help. Join a group that suits your interests.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
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Contribute to the environmental impact group here

Windowfarming may ultimately provide a way of getting SOME of one’s vegetables at a lower carbon cost than store bought vegetables. In our existing food system, it takes 7-10 calories of fossil fuels to produce one calorie of food when transportation and packaging are taken into account (http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/energy/). That’s all we windowfarmers have to beat to be making progress. But we need to be very transparent about our numbers and how they compare to these numbers. Approximately 20-25 vegetable plants can grow in a 4-column windowfarm in a normal home window. How many calories of food can we produce and how low can we get the fossil fuel use for these hydroponic gardens while keeping them easy to maintain and pleasing to their human roommates? How much control can we get as the end consumers to know exactly where all the components came from and understand their environmental impact?

NUTRITIONAL IMPACT
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Contribute to nutritional impact group here

There may also be a nutritional benefit to windowfarmed vegetables over those bought at a grocery store. Researchers correlate high caloric content responsible for American obesity with the degree of food processing and the distance food has to travel (http://web.mit.edu/newsofice/2009/foodshed.html). My windowfarmed crops TASTE better and seem fresher than food I get at the grocery store. I think that’s because these veggies are still ALIVE.

EDUCATIONAL IMPACT
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Contribute to the educational impact group here

A retooling of the food system faces several problems related to education & public perception. First, there is a lack of understanding of the value of change, nutrition, how the system works, or how to fix it. We just don’t know as much about where our food comes from and nutrition has gotten to be a very distant complicated topic compared to the way we might have understood it when we all grew our own. Hands-on “constructivist” learning has been shown to be most effective and the Windowfarms Project has people learn in just about the most hands-on constructivist way possible, but its also just fun and pretty. Just steps from the table, Windowfarmers nurture their own food-bearing plants– historically a core human skill– which leads to a better understanding of humans’ nutritional needs and how much the quality of the plants one eats matters. I put a lot of care and attention into ensuring that my plants themselves get the best possible nutrition. When my lettuce is wilty or spotty, I research it’s health and thereby end up learning about my own metabolic processes. Windowfarmers are not back seat observers in conversations about the food system, they are drivers with experience and a personal stake in the matter. However, all this food education might just creep up on them unawares, born out of their passion for gardening, design, or fresh herbs.

OPENNESS & PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

There’s no group for this yet. Start one here.

As Silicon Valley venture capitalists twitter about agriculture being the next big market and governments begin funding new agricultural tech startups (see Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringers FoodNYC plan) we need to be very careful that we are not turning food production into yet another set of proprietary technologies that will aggregate power over another vital life resource in the hands of the few. We have seen what happens when we are not proactive about keeping vital ideas and research in the public domain, e.g. Monsanto or the pharmaceutical industry. We do not blankly advocate opensource everything, but when it comes to resources that are essential to life like food and medicine, absolutely. In a sustainable society, the knowledge about how to grow our own food and provide for ourselves should remain in the hands of individuals as well as in those of the large organizations who produce en masse. Complex automated systems set up on skyscraper rooftops and maintained by only a few specialists, will undoubtedly provide more food, but the knowledge and experience should really be shared with as many folks as possible. We believe that giving folks of all stripes the know-how and ability to grow food for themselves, where it is convenient and accessible in their apartments, will make our food system exponentially stronger and smarter. We are aware that there may be legal battles to be fought here and we have good people on our side, helping us look ahead.

My class at GreenFab http://www.bronxgreenfab.org/ in the Bronx is building a rather large window farm that we plan on connecting to a living machine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_machines

The machine will consist of 4 cells of water with goldfish, snails, oyster shells, sand and gravel. Since we have animals in our system, we don’t want to use any chemical based plant food.

What do you recommend we do to feed the plants? We are hoping that the fish poo and oyster shells will provide nutrients, but I’m not sure it will be enough.

Has anyone tried to mix an aquarium with a window farm?

Also, we have huge window space. Enough for 9 columns of 7 plants! Do you think it’s a really bad idea to start off this large scale? We have all the materials and our columns are done, we just have to set up the reservoirs and hang the columns. But before I drill holes into the PVC, I just wanted to get some feedback on if we are trying to be too ambitious.

Any experience / advice for a system this big?

Bronx born salad…yummmm.

I have been working with the air lift system version in a workshop for the community at a local library here in Denver as a collaboration between Denver Public Library, Denver Urban Gardens and Artstreet. Byers Branch Library  provided the funding for 11 people to build and bring home a windowfarm.(Amazing!)

We made a few alterations to the original design & so far it’s working just fine. Instead of using an air pump and the air needles (I tried this way too but had a hard time getting enough power to get the water to the top) we used submersible pumps. The challenge here was having to get a powerful enough pump to raise the water 3-5’ that isn’t too powerful. We used the Active Aqua 160 gallons/hour. This pumps far more water than you need so in order to slow the flow down a bit we clamped the hose (not too much to make the motor mad).

Another small adaptation we made was recycling old 2-4″ bedding pots instead of the official hydroponic net pots. We used hole punchers and utility knives to make the holes.

The people who attended the workshop were thrilled about this design and vision & the whole workshop was a blast. We built community while building window farms.

Artstreet makes a window farm for their classroom with students' help.

Getting ready to cut

This mother and daughter team build together using a potpourri of recycled jugs

All Done!

Thank you for all your great research, ideas and collaborative spirit!

Hi Windowfarmers,

In addition to an aspiring home food grower, I’m a grad student at the New School doing research on participatory media and sustainable everyday practices. My primary case study deals with local food systems and closing the waste loop. I’ve created a brief survey here (bit.ly/bAXPxQ), and I’d greatly appreciate it if you would consider spending a few minutes to take it! I’m also looking for respondents to participate in brief interviews about their use of technology (both “low” and “high”) in relation to their food growing, food sourcing, and/or waste minimization practices and aspirations. There is an area in the survey to indicate whether you would be interested in participating in an interview–or you could feel free to contact me here!

Thanks again for your time!

James Wilcox

I am working with 3rd-5th graders on growing plants hydroponically in their classrooms.  Before attempting the full windowfarm structure, I worked with my students to build individual hydroponic systems using the hand-pump and water-wicking system.  While the hand-pumps we built seem to be working, our yarn-wicks are not wicking any water up…

Any suggestions on materials (other than yarn) that works well for a wick system?