Here are my two lettuce plants at 15 weeks.  I have been getting about one salad a week to eat.  In the bowl are about 10 good sized leaves that I just picked and chopped up and the plants don’t look like I touched them! 

Lettuce For Lunch

The peas on the other hand I am not so sure about.  They are producing a 2 to 3 pods a week which is good, but some leaves are pale and are dying off here and there.   There is new growth and it’s still flowering.  I’m not sure if it is the fungus gnats (which I still have) or maybe a nutrient problem.  Either way, the lettuce does not seem troubled at all.

Pea & Lettuce WF

Pea Harvest

The gnats seem to be under control but are not gone.  The sticky paper is doing a good job of catching the adult flys.  The guys at the hydroponic store talked me into trying some insecticidal soap to kill the larvea, but not sure how effective it has been.  The next time I am at the store, I’ll get the neem oil and give that a try.

Besides my fungus gnat problem (http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/01/04/borer-type-bugs-in-my-peas/),  my second WF is doing well.  We have been picking lettuce leaves off around the edges to eat.  The lettuce has two plants in it now.  At first I sprouted about 5 and have thinned it down to two.  I never like thinning plants out.  I know if this was in dirt outside I would have thinned to just the one.  I just wonder since there should be less competition for the nutrients, how many plants can you get away with in each net pot?

The first pea is almost ready to be picked and more are on the way.  The pea is on the bottom and has three plants in it.  I have added dowls through the bottles to form a trellis.  Since it was on the bottom, the root have traveled down into the resevoir and it has turned itself into a deep water culture.   Since I had an extra port on the air pump, I added an aeration stone into the resevoir to give it some more oxygen.

A good question here is which plants naturally have short roots and which prefer longer roots.  I wonder what would have happened if the lettuce and pea were reversed…

WF at 70days

Peas Flowering

Bibb Lettuce

Here are some more pictures of sprouting the seeds.  I sprouted them directly in the rockwool in a makeshift terrarium and then moved them into the WF when they were big enough.

Sprouting Peas in Rockwool

Sprouting Lettuce in a Terrarium

Lettuce first placed in WF

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?

This supposedly is a Miniature Yellow Bell pepper.

Photos show it to be a compact plant with short internodes and a lot of small, dark green leaves.

What a nice addition, and it probably won’t get too large in a WF anyway …

This plant is now 7,5 weeks old, and it’s a whopping 75cm high.

It has few leaves, but they really are huge (ramifications have begun to appear, too).

And it’s flowering.

Maybe it’ll grow as high as the bolting lettuce next to it: 100cm.

Nice.

Edit 2010-08-14:

The first two flowers have opened; currently standing at 87cm …

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/

You can grow anything but root vegetables.

Here is a list of plants we have grown in windowfarms using supplemental lighting from CFL bulbs:

Fruiting Plants
Okra, cherry tomatoes, scallop squash, small cucumbers, beans, strawberries, peppers, peas, japanese eggplant.

Leafy Greens
Arugula, bok choy, brocolli rabe, kale, chard, radicchio, watercress, chives, various microgreens, and many varieties of lettuce.

Herbs
Rosemary, cilantro, basil, thyme, oregano, parsley, mint, and sage.

Edible Flowers
Nasturtium, violets, and marigolds.

We have had varying degrees of success with each depending on the particular microclimate of the window, the amount of natural sunlight available, the drip rate, the type of nutrients, our ability to fight pests, the source of the seeds, and the particular variety of each species.

You can actually grow some pretty big, productive plants even though the containers are small because plants growing in hydroponic systems grow differently from dirt plants. Instead of growing large long roots that have to grow far from the plant to find new water and nutrients in the soil, plants grow more compact rootballs that grow a lot of root hairs for more surface area to absorb more of the water and nutrients you are sending directly to the roots.

Check out how big and healthy some of the plants in this early system were.

Many more varieties of plants are certainly possible but we need your help testing what works because we can only grow so much ourselves. We need you to try out different plants and techniques and share your knowledge about what works. The goal is to get the most nutrients and the most variety for the carbon footprint of the systems.

As we refine the website, we will create ways that you can track and share your results. In the meantime, please focus on getting your system ready and working well and in the meantime, just please be sure to make posts and tag them well. We strongly encourage new users to start with the simple 3-plant airlift system (there are some chronic problems with the reservoir system so we are moving away from it).

This video was taken more recently on March 30th, 2010:

silox – 1st Week Progress and 2nd Vertical Plant Tower w/ New Plants – March 30th, 2010

This is an update after the 1st week of growing in the 1st vertical plant tower and after building/planting in the 2nd vertical tower of our hydroponic window farm.

We have learned a few things just in the 1st week of setting up, planting and running our hydroponic window farm that I would like to share with you.

*  Mentioned it in my last post, but I cannot stress enough, water quality is VERY IMPORTANT.  The first couple of days I used our city tap water to power the 1st vertical plant tower(before my first video/blog until 3/22/2010).  This was also before I purchased a simple PH testing kit.  The electronic ones are nice, but I stuck with the manual method using a small container and drops to gauge the PH for costs reasons, plus I don’t think I’ll have to use it that often due to the reservoir sizes and the water I use now.  I tested the PH of the city tap water I was using and it was over 7 which is not good. Aside from an unbalance PH, the city tap water also contains chlorine, flouride, other chemicals and various minerals.  Even though water can be naturally dechlorinated by letting it sit 24-48hrs in an uncovered bucket, you still have to worry about all of the other nasty stuff and the PH of the water.  Now, I could go through the trouble of filtering my water which I may do in some form or fashion in the future, but I find it easier and cheaper to purchase RO(Reverse Osmosis) water locally from 1 of the 2 sources less than a mile away which I did and I can happily say I’m now using it.  Right out of the gate, the PH was perfect and no impurities whatsoever.  An unbalanced PH can cause the plants to stop uptaking some or all nutrients in order to protect itself(from what I’ve read), same with all of the other chemicals inside the water.  We do have some indoor AC units that collect several gallons of condensation daily in collection containers when they are working hard all day to cool down the apartment, so we will probably look into using that water instead when the time comes to keep them on.  We are also considering purchasing an atmospheric water generator such as an Ecoloblue which also collects water from the atmosphere/humidity in the air, but also filters it afterwards which allows it to be used for drinking/cooking etc(7-8 gallons a day!) and the hydro reservoirs.

* Adequate lighting is also very important to keep the plants photosynthesizing which equals produce!  I think it’s probably safe to say that most window farms will probably not have 100% of the needed light to produce as quickly or as much as most people desire, but I could be wrong here.  That is certainly the situation in our setup and while we try to use the natural sunlight when it’s available for a few hours a day, we’ve supplemented to make up for the lack of desired light.  We added a 4ft 54W florescent bulb complete with reflector to our window farm and attached to the sliding glass door facing the vertical plant towers.  We reshaped the reflector to open up and allow for light to be casted almost 180 degrees towards the side of the plants which I believe really helps the light be as efficient as possible and keeping unwanted light from shining out of our window towards the neighbors.  You can tell the plants really are reaching to grow towards the light, so much that I’m going to need to move the vertical plant tower back just a hair to keep them from touching it, hehe.  I have the light on a timer for 12hr on/12hr off(6:30am to 6:30pm).

* Attaching the wooden dowels that support all of the plant containers on the vertical plant tower to the reservior for extra support sounded like a good idea at first, but presented some logistical maintenance problems later on.  We corrected this by mounting a aluminum L bracket (the kind designed to hold up a simple shelf) to the top of the window area so they wooden dowels can held straight up via a hook driven into the top of the dowel and inserted into a hole on the end of the L bracket.  All of the weight of the plants/dowel is resting on the floor via the bottom of the wooden dowel and the hook/L bracket assembly is to keep it from tipping over.  This allows for us to easily move or rotate the vertical plant tower and remove the reservior for water maintenance(water replacment and cleaning).  This will also allow me to move the vertical plant towers back some from the light as I mentioned above with a simple modification or two.

* We are using the caps that came with the bottles and recreated the holes in them to be smaller directly in the middle of the cap.  The plan does not call for these caps AFAIK.  Why did I use them?  To keep water from splashing out of the containers onto the floor.  Without the caps or using caps with large holes in them allows for water to flow unevenly which results in droplets that are thrown out the container and that adds up quickly over a few days.  I recut the caps to use a smaller hole(5mm) and this seems to work very well.

Recap of plants we have growing, locations and dates planted

Plants on 1st vertical tower(far left) from top to bottom – planted on 20100321:
1. Butterleaf Lettuce
2. Green Beans
3. Strawberries
4. Jalapenos

Plants on 2nd vertical tower(middle or right) from top to bottom – planted on 20100330:
1. Brussel Sprouts
2. Cauliflower
3. Broccoli
4. Eggplant

I thought it would be interesting to do a little math on the cost to run the light and pump.  With my current setup(1x 54W florescent light and 1x Petco 9904 pump), assuming a 30day month and $0.15/KWh power rate, it costs a mere approximate of $3.50 a month to run the light 12hrs a day and the pump non-stop.  Not bad!!

Our future plan is to put a 3 vertical plant tower in the same window on the far right.  In order to do so, we will need to purchase another 4ft 54W florescent light w/ reflector(lights can be daisy-chained together out of the box), another air pump and 4 more 1.5L Ozarka water bottles.  We pre-purchased all of the other materials with the expectations of creating at least 3 vertical plant towers total.

Will try to post an update in about a week’s time.  Happy window farming!

To avoid confusion, this video was taken on Sunday, March 21st, 2010 and was just now uploaded.

silox – Initial Setup and 1st Vertical Plant Tower – March 21st, 2010

The initial setup and after planting in the 1st vertical tower of our hydroponic window farm. Our hydroponic window farm is located in our apartment sliding glass door area somewhere in Texas We are very excited to see how our hydroponic window farm turns out and learn from our experiences. We want to use our knowledge we gain from this to setup a much a larger aquaponics setup(aquaculture + hydroponics) down the road when we move into a house.

This configuration is based from the 3-container, air lift instructions found on windowfarms.org.  We tried to get away with 5 containers, but that seemed to be too high for the water to make it(tried 1 and 2 air tubes).  We settled for 4 per tower(1 more than what the plan calls for).  We also tried getting away with just one air pump tube to power this vertical plant tower, but ended up using two like the plans call for.  I think you might be able to get away with using just one if you were to buy separate, better quality one-way air valves instead of using the ones that came with the Petco pump as each one certainly seems to provide different amounts of air resistance (tested by blowing through each one before installation).

What we are using:
- Petco 9904 Air Pump(4 air outlets and kit includes one-way air valves)
- 1 Gallon or more reservior(8L or about 2 gallons in my case)
- Various surgical type tubing, but most importantly reinforced tubing for bringing water from the reservior to the top to prevent kinking in the line
- Wooden dowel to attach 1.5L plastic water bottles to
- Sports ball air needles (1 for each air line coming from Petco air pump)
- 3″ net cups for plants
- Hydroton(or equivalent) expanded clay pellets for growing medium
- 4ft 54W flourescent light bulb w/ ballast and reflector(reshaped to redirect near 180 degrees on one side)
- Timer for light to keep it on 8-12hrs(depends on cycle of plants and natural light availability)
- Water(Qualtify makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE). Get Reverse Osmosis water if at all possible or something equivalent. Make sure PH is right(between 5.5 and 6.5) and it’s pure.
- Botanicare Pure Blend Pro Grow Nutrients(Organic) for all vegitation phases of growth
- Botanicare Pure Blend Pro Bloom(Organic) for fruiting of plants(haven’t used yet and may not be necessary, so we’ll see)

Plants on 1st vertical tower(far left) from top to bottom:
1. Butterleaf Lettuce
2. Green Beans
3. Strawberries
4. Jalapenos

We will try to post an update once a week for now until we at least harvest most of these vegetables to show trials and tribulations to get to that point(we are hopeful we will make it that far, lol)

Moveable hanging windowfarm we made for demos

These plants were all started from seed in February. The lettuce loved the cool early spring. Look at how bushy that blackseeded simpson got (mid left). There are also cucumber (the yellow flowers at top left), okra (maple-looking leaves mid right) , green beans (top right) kale (bottom right) and cherry tomatoes (bottom left), jalepenos, and Japanese Eggplant (bottom right big leaves) in this system. The cherry tomatoes,  jalepenos, and okra are just now ripe in early August. Beans keep coming- super tasty, crunchy, and sweet. The lettuce went to seed and started tasting better about after about 2 months of churning out georgeous new leaves constantly when we picked them.  Aphids and a weekend when I left the pump off (OOPS!) killed the eggplant. The cucumbers were a real mystery. Like Marilyn and James Dean, they died a young tragic death after a short, but full life. Read their sad story here. Someone else please try cucumbers!