Few ! It seems it took me as much time to post this one as to build the real thing. But here it is.  I wanted to make a plastic-free windowfarm that would be appealing to the eye and would blend nicely with our Victorian house, from the inside as well as from the outside. (In French, I like to call it “potager vertical” – vertical vegetable garden).

I wanted a sustainable system, sturdy, easy to handle and that I could easily push away from the window, just like shutters.  At first, I envisioned to pump up the water with an airlift system and maybe l’ll come back to the idea, after all. But having free access to those slow drip tubes made me dream of an electric-free system as well. And how about autonomy : a system that would run by itself or with very few maintenance for up to five or six days ?

Finally, I wanted to nourish my plants with the manure from my earthworm composter.

In the beginnings of my experimentation, my slow-drip system  allowed me 3 to 4 days of autonomy, providing that I readjusted the dripping flow once or twice a day. But then, I discovered that  my plants didn’t need as much water (I have rock wool in my pots as well as clay pellets). So, I’m slowing the flow and closing it off completely during the night. That way, I expect to make my upper reservoirs last for more than seven days before having to refill them (with fresh water and nutrients – the old water will be fed to my ornemental plants, which are planted in soil).

No splashing problems so far : My pots are only 5” to 6” apart, one under the other. Each drop don’t gather enough speed to explode into many droplets and splash everywhere. Also, to direct each drop towards the middle of the pot right under it, I took a Hydroton pellet of just the right size and blocked up the draining hole of the pots with it, making sure that it would protrude outside of (under) the pot. The droplets then gather at the lower part of the clay pellet and are therefore nicely centered before making their dive into the next level of the installation. Eventually, I suspect I will have to introduce a mesh between the clay pellet and the pot’s hole (a short shoe lace should do the thing) to prevent the plants’ foliage from diverting the flow of water outside the pots. We’ll see…

When you click on photos, you have further explanations. After the photos, you’ll find a list of materials and a few more explanations.

The tools I used : hammer, screwdriver, long-nose plier, nail.

As I succeeded in sending a first communication, here’s the information about my experiment. As I said,  two weeks ago, I constructed a starter system that could allow me to get familiarized with all this first hand. I didn’t use the plans provided on the site, just browsed around, read a lot,thought a lot and observed. The funny thing is that, besides the need to buy hydroton, I didn’t spend one dime on my small and crude installation. Here is what I used so far :

. 1   2L soda bottle

.1   1L soda bottle

.1  1L Pedialite bottle (an oral electrolyte maintenance solution to prevent dehydration during diarrhea and which is also very effective to stop heartburns as well, by the way). The bottle is nicely square and I could open four windows in it, one on each side. But the plastic is not entirely transparent. Rather a smoky white. It’s the bottle at the bottom of the line.

. 1 tubing for slowdrip enteral feeding (my students are mentally and physically disabled and some can’t feed themselves by their mouths, so this kind of tubing is very abundant in our recycling bin and never comes in direct contact with the person, just with the feeding solution). See third photo. The product is american. Don’t know its cost, but it should be quite affordable.

. 1  4L ice cream container as a top reservoir (see the top shelve in the 2nd photo)

. 1 small rock to anchor the tubing to the bottom of the reservoir. See second photo.

. 1 metal container as bottom reservoir (it’s coated with a cooked layer, but I don’t remember how it’s called). See at the bottom of the system in the second photo.

. 3 plastic flower pots instead of net pots (the type you find in gardening centers when you buy baby perennials. The plastic of the cheapest ones is very thin and so flimsy you can compress them into the bottles without breaking them. Poking holes or cutting slits in the sides is also very easy.) I didn’t post any photo.

. Instead of hydroton, I thought of using my husband’s old glass marbles collection from childhood days, but since we want to give them to our grandson eventually, I refrained from that. Glass is inert, after all, and the marbles are the right size, but then I realized how hydroton is light-weighted, how it absorbs water and is full of small holes, so I don’t think marbles would be a good substitute after all. Besides, hydroton is quite cheap.

. For making a dark room, I simply used an old paper bag from a boutique. The exterior layer (the side with the store’s logo on it) was black, so I put that side inside to face the roots, showing only the regular brown paper layer.

. To suspend the whole thing, my husband gave me a roll of electric wiring that was gattering dust in the basement. It’s copper covered with black plastic and should be very sturdy. Each bottle was then secured with gardening metal wire covered with plastic as well.

My first experiment to make water run through the system was with the small 600mL feeding reservoir you can see on the third photo, put directly over the line of bottles (fine, since it comes with a nice handle to suspend it). But the water pressure doesn’t ensure a regular flow. This means that you have to ajust the flow with the clamp about every hour. And after three hours, the bottle was empty. That’s why I came up with the 4L (1 gallon) reservoir. The flow is much more regular, needing adjustment only every 18 to 24 hours. Plus, it lasted 72 hours before coming to a halt. Much better.

I’m currently trying other experiments to see how the system can be improved and I’ll come back to you with this.

For version 3.0 system.

I am having difficulties with the end cap to the bottom bottle (reservoir).

I have a .6″ check valve but getting the parts for method B and C is near impossible.  The Industrial Specialties company with the plastic threaded bulkhead only ships supplies if  the  if you spend $25 and I don’t need that many bulkheads so I am not going to order from them.  Some parts for method B and C both cannot be found at Home Depot so I am kinda stuck.  Method A is the easiest route but states that it is only for a .8″ check valve.  Does anyone know why I cannot use Method A for a .6″ check valve?  What are the difficulties?  Thanks.