I’m trying again to grow lettuce, snap peas, and green beans. I’m starting in dirt and wondering a few things.

1. How large should the plants be before moving to the WF?
2. Should I rinse off all the dirt?
3. How many plants should I put per mesh pot?
4. If I should put multiple per mesh pot, how far should I space the seedlings?

Thanks!!

I completed my first window farm column about a month ago. I had started the seeds about two months ago but I have lost the majority of the plants I started already. I started my seeds in rockwool cubes and when they were about an inch tall I transferred them to my window farm. I left them in the rockwool cube and set the cube in a plastic grow basket with clay pellets around the cube. Up until this week I was using tap water combined with Liquid Karma by Botanicare.

The problem I am having is that the water and nutrient formula is adjusted to the correct pH in the reservoir but as it goes through my system it slowly increases. After going through the third bottle, the pH is already too high.

After doing research here and in other forums, I made the following adjustments.

1. Removed the rock wool cubes from the system completely and boiled the clay pellets. The plants are now growing in the baskets with only clay pellets. This adjustment seems to have made a slight impact on the severity of the pH increase through the system, but not enough to keep my plants alive.

2. I switched to distilled water and started to rinse the system and replace nutrient formula every other day. Again, this only made a slight impact on the pH levels. Now the pH doesn’t increase as fast, but after 10 minutes of the system running, the pH is back up above 7.5 in the reservoir.

Thankfully that I have been able to hold onto the remaining few plants by adding a few drops of lime juice to the tank every time I get a break from work (usually about 4 times during the day) but my plants are all less than 3 inches tall and the leaves are starting to turn brown on the very tips.

The remaining plants are beans (I think these could survive nuclear war they are so resilient), two tomatoes, two peppers and three basil that haven’t yet reached 2 inches tall. I lost all of the lettuce, two varieties of peppers, and my hybrid cherry tomatoes.

Anything you can suggest to help me out would be fantastic. I feel like I am taking care of a new puppy because I can’t leave my system alone for a day!

I posted earlier about designing a prettier window farm. I’m now building a clean and simple single column farm, and I figured it might be about time to post something about my progress. The pots, suspension and drip pipes are mostly in place. The reservoir and the airlift are still in the works. I haven’t made up my mind yet about what kind of reservoir to use.

Part list:

• 4 Plastic orchid pots. These are made of Polypropylene, which is (afaik) safe to use with food. The pots also have an inward dent in the bottom, so they will never drain completely. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Be careful when drilling plastic. I managed to break one pot by using too much pressure. (2 euros/pot at Bauhaus)
• 2 meters of aluminum pipe, 6 mm diameter. One meter for drip pipes and another for the air lift. (4 euros/meter at Bauhaus)
• Two meters of aluminum strip. Mine is about 12mm wide and 2mm thick. I wouldn’t go any thinner than 2mm, since the rigidity of the column would likely suffer. (4 euros/meter at Bauhaus)
• 4 gaskets for sealing the drip pipes. The ones I got seem to do the job pretty well: 17mm outer diameter, 5mm inner diameter, 4mm thick. (around 2 euros for a 4-pack)
• M3 Nuts, washers and screws (or bolts) for attaching the pots to the aluminum strip. (Less than 1e total)

Parts not installed yet:

• Sera Air 275R Plus air pump with adjustable air flow and two outlets. Came with two non-return valves. (28 euros at a local aquarium store)
• 6mm “colorless” air hose. It’s possible to stretch this over the aluminum pipe using pliers and some soap as lubricant. (2 euros / meter at a local aquarium store)

Still missing the reservoir and the airlift needle(s).

This is not the final assembly and you might notice that some of the drip pipes and pots are not straight. I’ll fix that before doing the actual planting. Originally I’d thought I’d have to glue the drip pipes to the pots, but with the gaskets in place and the hole being tight enough, I’m not sure if glue is necessary. It won’t matter anyway if the drip pipes are wet on the outside.

I was wondering though, should the downward water flow be somehow restrained so that the water drips down slowly? Now when I pour water in the top pot, most of the water has come down in less than a minute. How does it work in WF 3.0?

The wife said it looks alright. I might even get a permission to build a second column Stay tuned. The next step is building the airlift.

I’m about to build my first WF. While I generally love the idea of growing food at home, the free design of WF 3.0 is a bit of an eyesore as such. I wanted to come up with something that’ll still be a full grown window farm, but is still approved by the wife.

Update: Second Draft

Thanks for the input everyone. I came up with a simpler less work intensive solution: flower pots. I went to a hardware store to look at PVC pipes, and stumbled upon some plastic orchid flower pots. They seemed right size and only cost 1,99 a piece, so I got two for testing. The pots have a dent in the bottom, kinda like wine bottles. See the drawing. This type of construction prevents the container from draining out completely. Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I also decided to try string instead of metal wire, since I couldn’t find proper parts for attaching the wire to the pots. Here’s a picture with initial string based suspension:

Drawing:

First Draft

Here’s my first draft on an improved design. I didn’t bother drawing the irrigation system in detail since it’s not really important in this context. The main idea is that we’ll encase the water bottle, suspension system and the irrigation system in painted PVC pipe. Any other pipe should do as well. My first draft doesn’t depict how exactly the pipe and bottle are attached to the suspension system. I haven’t really made up my mind on how I should implement it. Anyway, the PVC pipe should be sort of fixed into the suspension wire system, while the bottle and the plant are easy to remove. It’s not really feasible to remove the pipe, since the wires and the irrigation hose run through the pipe.

Comments and improvement ideas welcome

See the next post for construction details and pics.

seems like there are quite a few things i need to know B4 i start building the window farm…i could just go ahead and build it following the instructions but i wanna do some research first…

mainly on:

-Hydroponic systerms and its nutrient solutions

-Design and the nitty gritty details to customise it according to my window and the physics

PLANTS-its life! Therefore proper responsibility should be taken B4 i start up the farm

ima take my time with this….its gonna pay off for sure!!

First, some background. This is my first window farm. I have no prior experience in hydroponics, but have grown many aquatic plants. I started making a DIY window farm following the directions of a single-column, 5-bottle hanging V3 window farm. I found that the bicycle needle airlift method just was not as reliable as I had hoped. It would sometimes work, and other times, I would find it not working at all. I researched the site and found that others had set up a t-valve airlift, and it seemed like the way to go. The other guides did not seem to include all the information I needed to get it set up for myself, so I decided to try it anyway. Below, I’ll tell you what I used. I will also say that if this method seems ridiculously simple and it looks like it’s so short that I might be missing something, it’s because it is ridiculously simple and I’m not missing anything… I think.

Parts needed (in addition to the other parts used for the V3 hanging window farm):

Standard aquarium airline. I went with black silicone, because it looks nice and will stop algae from growing in the airline. I bought 25 feet, because it was cheap and I will probably use more when I add columns later.

T-valve. I purchased a metal t-valve from PetSmart. They have plastic ones for even cheaper.

Silicone glue. You want to make sure you get silicone glue that is 100% silicone. I got mine at a hardware store, but they also often carry this at pet stores/fish stores (for aquarium repair). The 100% silicone will ensure that there are no additives that could leak into your water and plants.

Steps taken to add the t-valve airlift to my V3 hanging window farm:

1. To make the sport cap airline connector, first insert 1″ of airline into the sport cap of the water reservoir.
2. Inside the sport cap, use the silicone glue to glue the airline in place. Make sure to form a complete seal. It must cure for at least 3 hours before you can get it wet. I recommend you let it cure for 24 hours before doing anything else with it.
3. Measure/cut 1.5 feet of airline from the cap, and connect this to one of the two straight ends of the t-valve.
4. Connect your airline from your air pump to the perpendicular end of the t-valve.
5. Using your remaining airline, connect one end to the remaining straight end of the t-valve.
6. Run this airline to the top of your window farm and into the top bottle. Secure using zip ties or what ever you prefer.
7. ???
8. PROFIT

Look at my awesome diagrams:

Help.

At first I was building it my own way, which had its own gigantic problems. But then I switched to something that looks basically identical to how the kits and kit instructions work. (The current ones with the long instructions — V 3 modular if I’m not confused.) It managed to get a tiny bit of water going up the system, but mostly it’s just bubbling at the bottom. I checked and there’s no leak that I can find. The water is just coming out the air needle, going down the tube somehow, and bubbling out the little gap at the bottom where the air’s meant to go in. I made sure the whole thing was as straight up and down as I could get it. I originally had a straw around the tube holding it straight (with its own angled bottom to let water in), but the bubbles were pushing water up that instead, which was just insulting.

The “add media” option isn’t cooperating with my computer, so I just stuck these on imageshack. Hopefully that’s not a problem for anyone.

You are looking at:
-1 basketball inflation needle
-2 segments of standard aquarium tube — I have no idea where you get the rigid stuff
-1 joiner/adapter thingy that goes between mini and normal aquarium tubes
-1 useless blob of silicone caulk

Ideas what I’m doing wrong?

We built a starter window farm earlier this year, and now I’d like to build a bigger one to cover the entire window. (I actually have a really huge window.)

But I’m having trouble understanding the assembly instructions for plumbing, specifically at and after bottle cap assembly (methods A, B, and C).  At the end of the instructions for each method, it ends with putting the other end of the airline tube into the pump.

I must have missed something or am not understanding how this works, but if you have four or more columns, how do they share one pump? In the full assembly picture, it looks like each doesn’t plug into the pump but rather into something with a loop above it. I can’t seem to find mention of this in the instructions.

Can someone please enlighten me?

Hi! I want to have a window farm in the future and I have three big questions to ask for planning. I know I’m a bit rambly, so if you’re a lazy reader, the first bit of #1 is the most important.

1: What plants have you successfully grown and harvested for several months? Everywhere I look, I see people reporting on what they STARTED planting as an experiment, and maybe on what grew fastest right away or one specific problem they had, and then people seem to go silent. Window farms are a lot of time and — despite what some people say — money, for me to spend on a one month experiment. Meanwhile people are talking about things like strawberries, which I thought needed bees in order to even produce fruit. And beans, see below. Some people explain why simple leafy plants do the best, while others talk about getting complete nutrition out of their farms. I know your luck is not my luck, but what do you know can actually produce food in one of these things six months on?

2: Some foods, like cucumbers and big tomatoes, are kinda heavy. One guy is even trying watermelon! Do you have problems with towers falling over or bottles sliding sideways from the weight? Or does the weight of everything else (like the growing…pebble thingies and support beams) usually make the weight of the food itself irrelevant? Building is already complicated for me because plastic drink bottles are the one kind of container which no one I know ever buys. Later on, I’ll probably make another big post asking about all the materials I DO have.

3: Bean plants. I know nothing of them. How much food do they actually make? Since I know there’s quite a variety, let’s limit it for now to things that are non-toxic when undercooked (I AM going to undercook them at some point, I promise you), and fairly easy to find seeds for offline in the US.

Come to think of it, has anyone ever tried to make a list or database of common plants and how they do in windowfarms? It would be tedious, and handy.

I am currently setting up my first windowfarm, and only have North facing windows.  Does anyone have suggestions of plants that have done well in low light conditions?  OR, is it necessary for me to add lamps?

Thanks!  I’m really excited to get started!