Hello, I’ve attempted my first window farm this week as a prototype for class. It’s been a bit difficult to find proper supplies in Hong Kong due to language barriers. Challenges and questions I’ve come across while exercising my poor engineering skills. I will be using black socks to cover the bottom of the bottles.

1. My seedlings have already been attacked twice with aphids and fungus gnats in it’s growing plugs. I had to start a fresh batch. If the seedlings are already so sensitive to the  moisture and humidity, how soon will my window farm be attacked by these pest? Anyone have experience with handling this in a humid country?

2. My tubing is too stiff to direct it away from the seedling. I’ve seen some systems using a toothpick or wooden chopstick, but my result was a moldy chopstick. I ended up using a fishing wire just to hold it down and a tape to keep the tube in place. I obviously need to find a better alternative. 

3. Reservoir problem. Due to the limited space in HK, I don’t have the luxury to have a big bottle for reservoir so I attempted to use a ketchup bottle on the bottom. I found the tip was a good way to plug the tubing in (I still need to reinforce it with plumbers tape, but haven’t found it yet).

4. Cutting through plastic was the biggest challenge.  I am not a very handy person, but I attempted to use the drill to make some holes on the bottom of the bottles but the bottom is thicker than the rest of the bottle, so I am not able to cut through it. In the end, I made a big circle but the bottles don’t fit perfectly. Any suggestions? I thought about using sticks to reinforce it.

5.I wanted to try out using water beads instead of clay pellets. Anyone have any success in it?

(First post as member!)

No under construction pictures, yet, but pictures of the space I have to work with. The plan is to work with the narrow window set on the far left to start.

Window Farm/Hydroponic Target Area

Microclimate/setup notes:

• There is a curtain rod that never gets used above the windows – I can use this to suspend the columns from.
• It gets full LIGHT for 80% of the day or more – there is no obstruction as we look over a harbour (Boston where the cruise ships dock/seaport) and we are the tallest point we can see.
• I can’t use the wider section because these are french doors that open to a balcony and the other small window area is a dedicated cat-viewing/perch area. (I’m amazed there wasn’t a cat there when I took this picture)

Materials:

• I already have full spectrum CFLs, conveniently, which partially factored into doing the second setup.
• I have two red and two blue LED grow lights from LED Wholesalers (12W, PAR38), already.
• The curtain rod above the windows wil be used for suspension. (I can hang from it and I’m about 130# – I wouldn’t want to do kipping pullups repeatedly on it, but is more than stable for this)

Plant selection for the vertical window garden:

• Catnip
• Spearmint
• Assorted kitchen herbs (chervil, thyme, lemon thyme, etc.) Rationale: Anything that comes in a plastic blister pack that has to be transported. I never use the entirety of these, they are $4USD per. Between plastic, the waste, the cost this is an ongoing pet peeve of mine.
• Specifically  NOT doing: Parsley, Cilantro, Basil. (These come in bulk and local)

Citrus Trees:

• I have 15 citrus trees (there are some in another room and some out of frame) and most aren’t doing too well (kaffir lime and calomondin orange are thriving, however). They used to be on the roofdeck of my previous place for the late spring->early fall and thrived. Wintering was always hit-miss, but this move was particularly bad. They’ve been yellowing leaves and have dropped between 50%->80% of their foliage. I suspect it is because this condo is so much moister/the soil doesn’t dry out fast enough and I’m seeing root rot. I’ve repotted them in fresh soil, but this has had very limited success.
• I’m looking at doing hydroponic citrus trees (marginally related to this community?) in the windows. Some of the trees have successfully fruited in the past. Since I’m acquiring the hydroton (per the materials sheet) for the columnar setup
• Advice needed:  ANY  experience anyone has doing this would be appreciated. I’m looking for setup thoughts (I’ve sketched out PVC exoskeletons for light rigging and water feeding on one end, to simple drip hoses on the other), nutrient thoughts (looking at Hoagland solutions as suggested by a few blogs – is there something better? One area I don’t have interest in is formulating my own nutrients for citrus trees)

Well, that’s it for now. This weekend will be materials gathering and whatnot until the hydroton and mesh cups arrive. Also, none of my friends that I’ve asked used disposable water bottles. Hah. Finding the water bottles is turning into the annoying part!

I am trying to grow herbs in my windowfarm. I bought the fresh herbs in a shop and replanted them into my windowfarm.

The plants are still alive, however some of the leaves on the plants have died, especially the basil does not look to good. I checked the pH and it was about 7 so I am trying to lower it, hopefully this will fix the problem.

Are other people having problems with the leaves on their plants dying?

How do you deal with different plants that have different water needs?
I imagine rosemary (dry) and Basil (humid) just to mention extremes…

Is it a problem at all in Hydro culture since as I understood the concept, the water runs through instead of staying in the single compartments for the plants?

Hey there,

I have pretty deep and wide, but not very high cut outs for my windows, so I would prefer to go in with than in hight.

My idea was to get several pull up bars that are used to spread in door frames in the window cut outs and hang a flower box on it.

Repeating that maybe three times underneath each other.

In summer I would keep it outside and get it in in winter.

Has anyone done something like that before or has a source in mind where to find ideas?

I am aiming to grow herbs only. That’s why I’m also not sure if it makes sense to use a real window-farm like model with permanent water dripping and hydro culture since some herbs prefer it rather dry…

Also some need quite room which is why I am unsure if those small bottles would do the job…

Is there any expertise on that?

Thx!

I just installed a new windowfarm in my girlfriend’s studio, I’ll post some updates as they seem to progress, same design as my loft farm.

This is a 3 bottle Tvalve airlift with several herbs
Cilantro
Purple Opal Basil
Rocket (Arugula)

They will be grown organically with the General Organics Nutritional lineup.

I’ll be adding another tower to the other side, eventually.

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!).