On my 3rd try of my window farm so far I thought I have been doing everything right. I got a ppm meter and am keeping my nutrient solution right where the bottle says to keep it (Pura Vida Grow 784 ppm), I am adding hydrogen peroxide about every 3 days and about an oz (I have a 1.25 L tank). I also got Humic acid and I added that to my system. The ph is right around 7. I used root riot plugs and then put the seedlings into my system with the hydroton clay pellets. Everything was growing great until just recently everything started dying, first the oldest leaves on the plants and gradually everything and things started turning yellow. I dont know what to do or even what I did wrong. Here are some pictures I took today or my plants. Help my plants please.

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 was inspired to start a window farm after the success of my Father’s automated airlift system.  It is a large 8 foot tall system with an upper-reservoir and is set to only run for a certain period of time every 3o minutes conserving water and energy.  Of course this required some more advanced electronics, but he is wonderful with that kind of stuff and open to any questions you may have for him.  You can find him on windowfarm.org if you search for William Belcher in the members, or you can e-mail him at MrBill731@yahoo.com.  He gave me permission to post some pictures and he will be soon sending me more detailed pictures of the entire system and will be uploading a video to youtube.  I will add further comments to this blog once I receive them, but for now, here are some wonderful pictures of his thriving plants:

I started working on this one several months ago, before the airlift system edged in with it’s sleek design and lower price point, but ended up moving house in the meantime and having to scrap my original plans. Luckily I moved to a place with great windows, so here is my old skool WF.

It’s still in process, I haven’t been able to work out the timers because my pump (QuietOne 3000)  is *too* powerful: it drains the bottom reservoir in about twenty seconds, and the timer I have only works at one minute intervals, minimum. So basically I just turn the pump on for a few seconds three or four times a day, for now that’s fine but I’m in the market for some fat drain pipe, it seems the only way to hold enough water + nutrients so the pump can cycle through a full minute. Plus I want to house the pump inside the reservoir. But you can see the plantings are doing pretty well, I have enough greens for sandwiches and salads a few times each week. Everything was started from seed using Bio Rooters.

Basil seems to love this method, the thyme is growing slowly so I don’t know if that’s a keeper or not.  Spinach is a bit leggy, but butter lettuce, frisee and arugula are doing fantastically well. I’m hoping to figure out the lighting situation come autumn so I can have green stuff growing all year ’round.

I started with drippers that were billed as 0.5 gallons/hour but they clogged all the time so I switched to 1 gallon/hour and they work great, haven’t stopped up yet.

There were enough leftover parts to get a good start on an airlift system, so I’m going to try some sungold tomatoes and more basil, radicchio, fennel for its purtyness, some vining nasturtiums and maybe even strawberries, since I am very impressed by the intrepid berry growers here on the site. I’m working on an integrated tubing/support and if it works i’ll post the evidence.

I had problems with my account and could not figure out how post for several months, so all the step-by-step problem solving I had planned to post all along has been superseded by all y’all but thanks for everyone’s help. This has been an incredibly fun and rewarding obsession, and I’m getting to know the folks at the hardware store really well (yo, parkrose!).

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/

So I’m ready to get started. I have pictures of my windows in my kitchen and am trying to post them. I want to grow herbs for soups and maybe salad greens. I have two and maybe three windows 2’x4’ and if it does really well then maybe we will remove the stylish faux stained glass window that my girlfriend made and grow herbs there too.

Another exciting development in international windowfarming,

Just want to let everyone know about this awesome windowfarm remote collaboration that will bring a custom-designed windowfarm made of Helsinki local materials and plants to the Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in conjunction with the Pixelache Festival. The project will generate local “how-tos” as well that make it possible for Scandinavians to “grow [herbs, edible and medicinal plants] yourself, over the dark winter months.”

This is a wide collaboration involving contributions from Helsinki local artists, biologists, the botanical gardens, an electronic arts festival and industrial hydroponics facilities. The project is being supported by Kultur Kontakt Nord/Nordic Culture Point.

Here’s a description from Ulla of Capsula:

The ‘Herbologies/Foraging Networks’ programme of events, focused in Helsinki (Finland) and Kurzeme region of Latvia, explores the cultural traditions and knowledge of herbs, edible and medicinal plants, within the contemporary context of online networks, open information-sharing, biological and hydroponic technologies. The traditions of finding and knowing about wild food in the local Nordic environment are slipping away from the current generation. How can one attract their attention: With books, online maps, workshops, mobile-guided tours, open-source information or DNA code? Or learn how to grow them yourself, over the dark winter months? The Pixelache Festival events introduce the different meeting points between the three collaborating partners, include presentations by international artists and Finnish botanical experts; workshops sharing that knowledge with the public in Botanical Garden of Helsinki; a round-table discussion about foraging in the urban context; a manifestation of the ‘WindowFarms’ project by Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray(US) that will be built and exhibited in the Takaikkuna of Kiasma, the Museum of contemporary art of Helsinki.”

Andrew Paterson, directing the Helsinki work on the project, reports on current progress, “I have been incubating seeds in rockwool cubes for my home system, so has Mikko with many more as tests.. However, importantly, we got confirmation recently that the Botanical museum will incubate the seeds for the Kiasma installation & have a list of plants already from the different Herbologies workshop persons. On tuesday this week we meet the botanical museum director & gardener.”

If you’re a person interested in historical perspectives, or just a regular gardener you might want to give herbs gardens a try. These small but lavish plants can often make the contrast in your garden. They’re uses are varied, and their history is remarkable in scope, and ingrained into our culture.  Historically it can be shown that if it wasn’t for herbs our society would have developed very differently.

Herbs gardens can be used to foster herbs for use as spices, food additives, and cooking aids. Other methods of use include medical treatment, and recreational activities. Medical herbs in particular have been extremely effective, and in some cases life saving over the centuries. Some herbs serve to treat burns, aid in poison treatment, and can reduce fever.

Medicinal herbs were the only form of treatment for many tribal and olden cultures. Some tribal societies today still use them as their preferred method of curative treatment. Many do it yourselfers trust curative herbs to modern medicine for relief of less serious illnesses due to the lack of negative side effects on the human body. Obviously herbs can’t deal with broken extremities and other severe conditions but for most less than life threatening problems they are satisfactory.

Culinary herbs raised from herbs gardens are mainly used for seasoning, or added to food for consumption. You can grow these from home, grind them up, and apply the powder on your favorite eating treats. They can also be used in the cooking method itself to bring out the flavor in cooked meats, and vegetables. You can also add them in soups to accentuate the flavor of the concoction and any other makings that you want to incorporate.

Regardless of what you use them for, herbs gardens can be a great addition to your garden. They can be a creative way to show your children how to care for plants, and cultivate their own gardens when they get older. Many gardeners in the city are starting to start gardens on their outdoor patios, and balconies. These gardens not only provide enjoyment but help save on the food budget, and save a good deal of money in the long term.

Herbs also have the added ability of cleaning the air, which is good for any home. Like all plants certain herbs only grow for one year and then need to be replanted. Others may rejuvenate every year and only need a minimal amount of attention and upkeep. The longevity of the plant is determined entirely on what type it is, and how it’s taken care of.

There are novice kits that you can obtain to help you get started
going. As with all starter kits they give you the ABC’s instructions on what to do, and then you go from there. Some herbs are not easy to grow so you might need to find help. Indoor gardens tend to be do better than outdoor gardens because they are protected from the elements.

Don’t forget that there is a lighting consideration with indoor herbs gardens. It is important to make sure they get sufficient of sunlight, or good artificial light. Newer grow lights for plants are much smaller, coolermore efficient, and energy effective than their previous models. This makes them  elementary to handle indoors, and makes their impact less on your electric bills.

So, I’ve got all these windows in my studio, which get tons of sunlight and I’ve been dying to put a window farm in them. I think for starters we’ll do just one window, 3.5ft x 7ft. I’ve already sourced out the bottles, cups, tubing, pipes, beads, plants, etc; my main issue is that the wall around the windows is difficult to drill into. There are possible alternative methods of hanging the system, probably from the old white pipe or the metal support brackets (not the copper heating pipes or the black pipe):

I guess my main concern is the weight of the whole system, and if I need to drill extra supports into the wall… I did the calculations and would need two 49″ reservoirs, and the 663 pump. How heavy do you think this whole system would be (pipes, water, pump, & 16-18 plants)? I think the pump is 2lbs, does anyone know offhand the weight of the sewer pipes (and roughly how many gallons of water goes into one?)

The other big question is plants, since I’d be starting this off the regular growing season – probably won’t get the system in place until mid-september. I was hoping to grow nasturtiums, cilantro, oregano, parsley, a few kinds of basil, lettuce or chard or mustard, hot peppers, mint and cherry or plum tomatoes. Wondering how these guys will do with the light changing (I’m not super concerned about the temperature, its supposed to be a warm fall in NYC…) and also if anyone has any experience with companion planting practices in a drip system – for example – if parsley & mint inhibit each other when in the soil near each other, I suppose they shouldn’t be in vertical succession in the drip chain… also conversely, vertically preceding the tomatoes with basil plants. Also wondering if anyone has successfully grown hydroponic rosemary and/or lavender?

Update: I’ve come across this, which has a chart down near the bottom of the page with different plants and their preferred ph levels… I wonder how important it is to group them?

For now, I’ll track the progress with this Flickr photoset, and will post updates here.

If it works out, how great would it be to have this whole wall of windows be a farm!

Here are a couple of sketches of what I’m going to try to build.

I’ve picked a not-that-sunny window in my kitchen, and want to build a system for growing various herbs that my wife and I like to cook with – thyme, basil, oregano, marjoram, cilantro, parsley, etc. I think I’m going to try nasturtiums too. I want to avoid hanging things vertically, and am thinking of three angled tubes with holes cut in the top for plant cups. Inside the large tube will be two tubes – a 1/2″ feed tube with some kind of drip emitters attached at the top of each cup, cups will be in some kind of tiny funnel, at the bottom will be a second drain tube. Hopefully all that will fit in a 4×4 square or round tube. I’ll have some kind of lights on either side of the windowframe to supplement the low natural light.

Feel free to contact me if you have questions about the design. I’m researching both how to apply drip irrigation parts to a vertical system like this, and whether there are eco-friendly alternatives to PVC as a building material.