In an effort to build a pump-free system, we put together a wicking system that can fit in a window. Yay no electricity! (At least until I add lights). We’re new to hydroponic gardening (pretty new to growing anything anywhere actually), so we’re making it up as we go, but this is what we’ve got…

Basically it is a couple of PVC pipes sealed at the ends, with a bunch of holes in them for the plants. You can kind of see on the top one that we cut a hole in the end and put in clear plastic so we can see the water level. There is a drain in each pipe which you can see is attached to piping making it easier to drain when its time to switch out the water. It will also make it easier to convert to some kind of flow system if this bombs. There is about an inch of standing water in the pipes. So far, only the top pipe has nutrients as those are already sprouted.

The materials cost about $70 without doing any shopping around (not including the stuff from the hydroponics store…nutrients and the grow medium). I’m pretty sure that’s cheaper than most everything else I’ve seen on here. Right now it will hold 17 plants. The top has 11 spots for things like herbs and greens and the bottom holds 6 for things that need more room, like peas. Adding up to 22 more should be easy…just waiting to see if it will work before I spring for the investment! We made sure to space them so that the holes line up with the one above, so if we need to go with a drip system later it will be an easy fix.

The seeds are sitting in yogurt cups with this stuff we got at the hydroponic store. No idea what it is. The guy who worked there said it would work and shouldn’t decompose and throw off my water. We found these silly Trix yogurts are actually a really great size and don’t have a glued on label, so I’m eating neon colored yogurt now. I put nylon rope into the material, cut a hole in the bottom of the cup, and the rope hangs into the water. The wicking works beautifully. The top of the spongy material stuff is always damp. Two weeks in and there’s some growth.

Arugula is shown. It took off after about a week even in my chilly sunroom (it rarely tops 60 degrees, low to mid 50′s are more normal.) I’m also seeing signs of life in the sugar snap peas I put in about 8 days ago, but pretty much just huge roots. They haven’t popped above the surface yet. Other things seem like they will need to wait for warmer weather (i.e. the basil, and the tomato).

SO, my question to you experienced folks is this: what to do about lights?? I want to stay very inexpensive because I don’t even know if this wicking business is going to work. Despite my south facing window, I know I need something because it IS January, and I DO live in Minnesota (our days are sunny and getting longer every day, but its still only about 9 hours of daylight). My boyfriend thinks we can do a string of LED Christmas lights and tuck them into a smaller PVC pipe cut in half and lined with foil. Thoughts? Ideas?

Did I miss something else that is going to make me fall on my face here?

Hello everyone !

The following is a schematic of a WF concept I’m currently testing. It uses no pump, relying instead on gravity for nutrient solution circulation and a manual pump for recharge. The upper tank and the lower tanks have a volume of 1 gallon (3.9 liters). Recharging the upper tank takes less then 3 minutes and it contains enough water for the farm to run for approximatly 24 hours. The growth column is currently host to 3 spinach plants and they appear to be doing quite well, having reached a height of 1 1/2 inch (4cm) in less than 2 weeks. In order to narrow my observations to the physical system of the farm itself, I have decided to use a commercial nutrient solution but I intend on eventually using compost tea.

My flow rate is approximatly 1 drop per second. Can anyone comment on this ? I’ve been wondering if it could become too few when the plants will grow bigger.

Updates to come with pictures of the actual system and updated schematics.

REF – Agrofenêtres, Sys. grav. 1 col. V0.8EN avr-2011GP (English version)

REF- Agrofenêtres, Sys. grav. 1 col. V0.8FR avr-2011GP (Version française)

Your comments are welcome

I made a few of these a couple of years ago for solar cooker projects. (See picture at the bottom)   If you make one, just note that there are many different clocks on the market and some are stronger than others. Many are very weak so be careful when you do your “clock conversion”.

Also note that some sort of electronic device with a stepper motor could probably do the same thing better. (But I have not a clue about electronics so someone else must do that project). And the stepper thing could have linear motion. It does not need to be rotational. A stepper device could also have slower drip at night when the plants are sleeping.

Back to the clock!

Basically you just replace the hour hand of the clock with a little wheel. You wind string around the wheel and attach the string to a little tube. The tube provides the drip for your window farm. During the day as the wheel turns the tube lowers and water drips out.  At the end of the day, you loop the string round the wheel twice and refill your upper reservoir.   So for sure, you have a bit of work to do to adapt this for windowfarms but it would be fun and you could use a clock or maybe an electrical timer  to provide the rotation.  Useful especially for people who do not like the noise from pumps?

Anyways, I don’t think any solar cook ever used my clock based tracker, (Which is a huge shame) but the window farm people seem a lot more willing to experiment!

Get to it!!!

Clock based dripper

Thanks,  Brian.

The dripper tracker is a simple waterclock that I made to turn a solar cooker reflector.

It has 2 parts. A little float valve to control water height in a container and a pinhole or valve on a tube to control water speed out of the float container.

Basically if water height in the container is the same all day the drip maintains the same speed all day.  In my version I used a hydroponics emitter  on a float to block off the water flow.  Someone else might use something completely different to achieve the same effect.  My original top container was a 5 gallon paint bucket and the waterlevel valve was in a becel margerine container.

The drip valve was an air control valve for an aquarium air stone.

The range of speeds available is large.  I used to calculate speed by adjusting the drip valve and measuring the flow  into a cup.  You get it close to what you want. Then you raise or lower the drip valve  to “fine tune” the speed.

If people are interested, I can draw more complicated versions too.

(For instance, you could have a waterclock independent of your hydroponics and that way the drip will be more reliable.

Windowfarm dripper for constant drip speed