I’m new to this and have yet to make my own windowfarm; born, bred and living in Reykjavik, Iceland.  The idea of using my time and resources to grow my own vegetables, greens and fruit is very exciting to me.

But after researching the articles here a little, there is one BIG thing bugging me about the whole thing.  Why use all those synthetic materials to grow food?  Why not try to design a system that uses natural materials like glass, wood etc. as much as possible?  Best would be to use only natural materials, of course!  Don’t know if that is practical though.

What are your suggestions and ideas on this issue?  I would love to get some feedback on the use of natural materials only.

This is my first post from my blog, I just cut and pasted so it may have some since abandoned thoughts.

So after much design (I will put up some scans of sketches later) I decided that for the final project, glass wine bottles would be the best choice. And after my friend (the same one as before) showed me this video: http://en.vidivodo.com/210769/beer-bottle-trick , I had my means (I had been trying to figure out how to do it before this with… little success). This is essentially working a controlled version of what happens when you pour ice water into a glass hot out of a dish washer. Through heating the glass along a specific line (just above the string) and then dunking it in cold water. It may take some practice, but after a few I generally do them first try every time now and have produced around twenty. And so, here is a little tutorial on how I did this for my garden… but it could easily be modified I would imagine.

I tried to make this pretty self-explanatory, the second-to-last tier of frames is supposed to be depicting rotation of the bottle. I had a lot of success with Charles Shaw bottles (the green is beneficial in blocking the sunlight that algae uses to grow, and covers the roots). With those I found that three lengths of twine worked well. I also had many other types (brown is good, clear you’ll have to paint), the thicker the glass, the more twine, I never used more than six lengths though (and I had some thick bottles). And try to keep the lengths relatively flat against the bottle. Make sure to tie tightly (or it either just shatters, or won’t work), and trim the extra off after the knot (I didn’t on the first tries and the bottle came out more like it had been in a bar brawl). I chose to submerge the bottle with the string in order to keep as much of the acetone in the string as possible when lighting, for higher temperature (because acetone is so volatile it will evaporate readily at room temperature). SAFETY TIP: DO THIS OUTSIDE! KEEP THE ACETONE CAN AND DUNK TUB AWAY FROM LIGHTING AREA. ALSO, THIS IS GLASS, BE CAREFUL WHEN HANDLING. WEAR SAFETY GLASSES, sometimes the bottles ‘pop’ the top and/or shatter.

Additional notes: If the glass is really thick at the bottom, it may not work, or get messy, just as a forewarning.  You want to stack the strings along the bottle so that they DO NOT overlap more than once, and are VERY tight, with no loose parts hanging of AT ALL, for the most effective and cleanest break.  Leave the string on while the bottle cools.  Any specific questions you can just message me.

The wonderful moderators found the bug bogging me down all this time, and now I can finally put up my farm on this blog!  I am going to repost my most recent update here, the history of design and construction can be found at: http://anuttahwindowfarm.blogspot.com/  I will also be putting up other posts with tutorials and ideas in the future, but for now…

Brief history of my little project: This system is constructed using all organic materials where the water comes in contact aside from a small section of tubing I use for a drip ring, and the net pots.  The containers are wine bottles of green or brown hues to prevent algae growth and root burn.  The construction is all using rope and string, hand tied.  The water up-tube is 1/4 inch plumbing copper tube.  And I have bundled into horizontal modules of three planters in order to sustain maximum yield with minimal energy consumption for water lift.

Constructing and tweeking season is over, and for the time being, this is the final iteration of my windowfarm. We were having issues with the pump giving out on us after the water level dropped an inch or two in the large sized wine bottles due to a design flaw (The needle was sitting three or four inches above the base of the bottle, leaving little volume above the needle; consequently making it stop as soon as the water was too close to the air outlet). Considering the amount of work that it would take to fix this flaw, we figured we could again try something different, and actually increase the volume as well. I thought of using a gallon of jug-wine instead of a traditionally shaped bottle, and we thought that drilling a hole would be better than severing the whole bottom (which only caused immense algae growth without a plant to block direct light from flooding through the open reservoir top, previously).

In my rush to pack before moving back into school, I was unable to build it, so my parents took over early, as was the initial plan, and my dad made the modifications. It has been working, apparently flawlessly, for the last month now. These are the first pictures I was able to take since the modifications. As well, there have been some modifications to the room that it is located in, and now gets even more light than ever due to a more permanent, and ideal placement. Also, an issue arose with the graduated tower, and due to the small volume of plants, we chose to take it out of commission for the time being (with intent to get it working again in my dorm room). So the tower is full of plants. The strawberry that I had planted in a 4-inch net pot would not fit however, so we decided to start dabbling in DWC, and you can see our little set-up at the bottom. It is simply a net-pot hanging from a mylar covered lid in 2 gallons of nutrient solution with a couple airstones in it. Due to some rain, and the construction on the room before that, it hasn’t had time to really ‘pop’ yet, but it is doing well, and I hope to see it really start growing in the next weeks.

Here are some pictures of the new set-up:

The whole system in our newly renovated sunroom

Some tomatoes, which have since ripened!

Some mint, thinking of drying for tea, maybe make some mojitos for friends who drink.

The remnants of my basil plant, I have cut it back a few times now, made some delicious organic, hydroponic pesto last time!

It has already started growing back in and is filling out the lower part of the tower.

One of my two jalapeño plants, flowering. I added some supplemental light up top this past weekend,

hopefully they will start fruiting soon!

My bell pepper plant with two peppers on it! They have gone yellow now!

My three broccoli plants look nice and healthy, a little bigger, but not flowering as of yet.

The new reservoir! It holds a gallon of water and has a modified lift mechanism from previous versions.

No issues in two months!

While not technically part of my windowfarm anymore, this guy got his beginnings in the top of my other tower before

taking it out of service.  I found him emaciated and covered in spider mites this weekend, yuck!  I accidentally let

him swim in his nutrient solution and then rinsed off the leaves and seem to have taken care of the issue.

And these are some pictures I took with my phone this weekend of the ripening fruits!

More info can be found here: http://anuttahwindowfarm.blogspot.com/

Is it possible to windowfarm with low e glass? If not, I’m out of luck!

The main factors to consider when deciding what to use as containers:

They should be made out of material that is lightweight, waterproof, easy to suspend, easy to cut holes in.

The containers need to be designed to position water flow so the roots of the plant are always exposed to the water/nutrient solution. This does not mean that there always needs to be water dripping or flowing around the roots – some growing mediums can retain the water for some time.

If you’re using net cups in your system, the container will need to fit them. There are various sized net cups. Concievably you could skip the net cups and grow your plant directly in something rockwool. Remember, however, that the roots need room to breathe, and so the container should have space around the growing medium so the roots.

The containers should be opaque or have an opaque cover on them so the plant roots are not exposed to light. The water bottle on the left is not yet covered. We’re working on designing paper covers. We’re considering fabric as well, but it may let in too much light.

The suspension system you use will depend on the containers. We used heavy-duty fishing wire for our prototype but a rigid suspension system might work better, especially when the plants get heavy. Perhaps steel rods, aluminum pipes or wood.

• The fishing line is hung from hooks drilled into the top of the window sill. Ian suggested using a chin up bar to suspend everything from at the top of the window instead of drilling into the wood. Gabriel points out that a cheaper alternative to a chin-up bar might be some threaded pipe from the hardware store. They sell metal pipe cut to length and threaded on the ends, which screws into plates that are screwed onto the window frame. So some holes in window frame, but only in two places vs. a series as with hooks. Very strong.

Aesthetics: Clearly this window farm will become a pretty major feature in the room, and you’ll want something you’ll love to look at. The containers could be modernist white plastic, bottles covered with wood veneer or paper with handmade drawn patterns, ….

We used water bottles as containers, with net cups inside holding the clay pellets and plants. The water bottles (Poland Spring or Deer Park 1.5 liter “eco-shape” bottles) are inverted, with holes cut out of them using a box cutter, so the net cup can be slid inside, where it rests in that indented part of the bottle.

Many hydroponics systems use PVC pipe in round or square shapes. In a window farm, you could suspend these pipes at angles and have the water consistently pumped through and trickling from one level to the next. The photo at the right shows a setup with what looks like 4″ PVC. There’s an instructable on how to make it here.

Square PVC pipes are also possible. These types of systems, with long pipes, are called NFT (Nutrient Film Technique). The water flows through the pipes constantly (if you’re using clay pellets or another medium that doesn’t retain much water), or periodically if you’re using something like rockwool for your plants.

Check out instructables for other people’s DIY hydroponics designs. Not many are vertical, but they may give you ideas for materials.

I love this sculpture by Ken Rinaldo. Transparent glass in a window farm would mean too much algae growth, but blown glass like this with elegant root covers inside the glass itself could be gorgeous.