I’m almost ready to change the solution in my window farm for the first time. What do you guys do with your old nutes? I have some other plants growing in soil and I was considering watering them with the old solution. I am not sure if this is a good idea or not, I would assume its fine, but I wanted to see what everyone else was doing with theirs.

Thanks!!
Melissa

Here in Dakar are a lot of bats. I didn’t find out yet where they sleep but since there are definitely no caves in the city, I’m guessing it is in trees and on buildings. It may be possible for me to collect some bat guano and I wonder, before I start sniffing around in less clean places, if this may be a good nutrient supplement for our garden.

I anticipate we are going to have trouble feeding our plants as I am quite sure that nobody here is going to go and buy nutrient mixes, so I’m looking for other options.

The second thing we have a huge supply of is fish, fresh, dried, rotten, bones… anyone know if this can be used?

Finally, since we are testing a fermentation pump, can the ripe juices be used as nutrients?

Thanks for any ideas!

I have set up the 4 bottles, and now I’m working on my airlift. I’m trying to do the T version instead of the air needles. But I’m having trouble getting the air to lift the water and not escape through what should be the water intake tube.

Any advice for this system? I’m going to go and cut a longer piece of tube and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks,

Melissa

-EDIT- (20 minutes later)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58467192@N06/5378581924/

So the longer tube completely helped! There is no air escaping from the system at all. Now my poor tomato plant that was without water all night is getting some.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58467192@N06/5377983157/

I purchased the white frame from ikea and it was around 20$. I plan on having 3 or 4 columns with a string of lights in between the columns. This frame will allow me to move the window farm around and close my blinds at night. I’m going to raise it up to window height once it’s all installed.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58467192@N06/5378580404/

Here is a short video of my airlift in action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qER-HLCHcE

-EDIT- (Later that day…)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58467192@N06/5378590143/

So my tomato is definately looking good! http://www.flickr.com/photos/58467192@N06/5379181542/in/photostream/
I have also transplanted a broccoli plant to the top of the column. http://www.flickr.com/photos/58467192@N06/5379182328/in/photostream/
My seedlings are starting to sprout! http://www.flickr.com/photos/58467192@N06/5378589329

I made another change to my system… I zip tied the coil of tube in the water so it is easier to remove and install. http://www.flickr.com/photos/58467192@N06/5379179122

Also, nutrients were added to the solution. I added part 1 and part 2 of the general nutrients, and I also added some “maximum plantroids” because it says:

“Plantroids Super-Vitamin Thrive Enhancer stimulates plant branching, increases photosynthesis and cell division. Plantroids also helps reduce stress as well as stimulates root growth”.

Just a warning about CFLs… I dropped one and it smashed into a million tiny shards. Took a while to make sure I got all the little pieces.

Can anyone give me advice on how to put pictures in my post, rather than just links? Thanks.

Hi all my dear friends at windowfarsms

I installed my windowfarms about one week ago,

now in this week,its running without nutrients,

I’m unable to buy nutrients from stores,its not available in here.

how can I make nutrients ?

I searched the blogs but couldnt find an operational solution.

can any one please help me in making it form food,or sth else ?

thanks.

This is what I have so far. I started from seed. They are sprouting well, except the cilantro which hasn’t yet. I just added the correct amount of nutrients to the reservoir for a gallon tank(this is after first week of constant water circulation). What do I do now? Do I keep the pump on? Should I look at a PH guide for these specific veggies? Even get a meter? I’m a newb. HELP! My windowfarm update 1.1.11

Hey everyone.  I just built my first airlift windowfarm using the V2 instructions on the our.windowfarms.org home page.  There is a local hydroponics store in my town so I was able to get all of the stuff I needed from there.  They pointed me towards some nutrient solution called Envy Part A and Envy Part B.  I had initially planned to get all organic nutrients since I will be growing vegetables to eat, but it was just too expensive.  Anyway, I’ve read some about “flushing” before harvesting the vegetables, and the guys at the hydroponics store offered some flushing solution, but I was wondering if just flushing with water for 7 days would work as well.  I don’t know that much about flushing and hydroponics so any information would be nice.  Thanks!

Is any body using the juice from an earthworm farm as the nutrients for their window farm? We are planning to have both within flats in Pretoria, South Africa. We are hoping to use them both in combination not only feeding an urban population but also limiting food waste in this way.

A log of my experiences with bokashi-type composting.
I will be using the ‘compost tea’ drained from the bin as fertiliser on potted plants and as nutrients in my WF.

Note, it’s not critical to buy an ‘official’ bin for this type of composting as it looks doable to make your own. You will need the bokashi bacteria mix, though.

To make your own bin, get two buckets where one must have a lid that can easily be sealed tight.
On the bottom bucket, you’ll need to affix some sort of spigot to drain the liquid. An old water container, possibly those large cardboard wine boxes or similar may have one that can be glued in place? Affix it as far down as possible. (If you have flexible tubing, you can glue in a piece of that, and just clamp it shut)
The other bucket – the one that will have the compost – drill a lot of small holes 1/16″ or so should do nicely. Try to space them 1 – 1.5″ apart.
Place the compost bucket on top of the one with the spigot and seal tightly. It’s nice if the compost bucket slides into the other. You don’t need more than about 1″ of height in the ‘sump’. Place lid on top…
That’s all there is, really, a large bucket with a sealed lid, and in the bottom some drainage holes that leads to a sump that can be drained with the spigot.

If you don’t want the ‘compost tea’, all you really need is a normal bucket with sealed lid. (place a grate or something in the bottom to create a chamber for the liquids to collect in, then dump them later when you empty the bucket. Or you can use two buckets stacked into each other, just leaving the spigot from the design.)

Usage.
This part is written as I experiment, and each new entry will be datemarked as I write. Some parts may still be inaccurate or even wrong when I finally post this… Assume that old date means it has been tested longer and that I probably removed what I later learned to be incorrect.

== August 4, 2010 ==
(Received bin and bokashi matter)
Started it off by covering the bottom with a generous amount of bokashi matter, at least 1/8″ or so thick. Then start throwing in waste food with a sprinkling of b.m on top.
It may be a good idea to collect the waste in a jar or something and only throw it into the bokashi bin once every day. Cutting the waste into small pieces is highly recommended.(1/2″ cubes or smaller)
While dumping liquids into the bin isn’t exactly recommended, dumping all-dry materials won’t do much good either. So stay away from thin soups and massive amounts of all-bran or old flour.
The most liquid I’ve felt safe in adding has been small slumps of jam, very old tomato puree and yoghurt.

== August 18, 2010 ==
The ‘Compost tea’ may contain debris and large particulate and should probably be filtered. For that reason I’ve bought a pack of 100 coffee filters, and I intend to cut them into 4 parts(each side being cut in half) for a total of 400 filters. I bought filters of unbleached paper.
Used filters can probably be recycled just by trowing them in the Bokashi bin, as it is biodegradable and doesn’t contain any bleaches.
Also, running the WF for two weeks without changing the water, just topping up and adding compost tea doesn’t seem to be a good idea. My system started smelling and the reservoir needed a thorough cleaning. (Large particulate may have been a contributing factor?)

== August 30, 2010 ==
The Bokashi bin is nearing full. At this rate it looks like it can hold about 1.5months worth of organic waste from my home, but I know that it’s slightly misleading in two parts.
1. When I started using it, I ‘started it off’ by adding a lot of very old food (tomato puree with a best before day a year or more ago, some freezer-burned meat, and a lot of spoiled vegetables), and that situation is now much less severe.
2. As my WF gets up to speed and veggies start producing, I will no longer have to buy as much vegetables in the stores. Most packaged vegetables comes in too large packs for my consumption, so some is inevitably spoiled.
Anyay… Another thing I’ve learned recently is that the bin is NOT completely odor safe. Raw fish parts(particularly guts) definitely leave a recognisable odor even if you use ‘liberal amounts’ o the Bokashi material. Of course, this is a problem I can get around by cleaning the fish where I catch it, instead of bringing it all home with me.
I should probably start looking for some buckets to make a ‘spare’ bin soon, before the current one is full, as the full one needs to sit for two weeks before dumping the contents into a normal compost.
Also, I may be able to get a $150 discount on the renovation fee if I can get the local authorities to accept this system in the same way they accept ordinary composting. (We have recycling, with 3 wheelie bins; organic waste, paper, ‘the rest’. Plastic goes into large bags. Glass and metal is delivered to centrally placed containers. Those with a ‘composting contract’ only have two wheelie bins. )

== September 1. ==
For different reasons I haven’t been draining the ‘compost tea’ for a week or so, so I expected there to be ‘a little more than usual’ today.
Seems raw fish contains a lot of liquids… including oils and whatnot… It was also NOT odor free. Thankfully I have whole bags of incense from my trip to Thailand this year…
Also, picked up a pair of 5L buckets in the hope of building a spare bucket.

== October 1. ==
Bokashi bucket is full and in the two week waiting period with lid closed.
I’ve also made a new one out of the two 5L buckets I bought earlier.
(I drilled a hole and epoxied in a piece of tubing to act as spigot, and just use a plastic clip to squeeze it closed.)
The stink problem after the fish remains may have been partially caused by using too little of the bokashi mix, but I don’t feel like experimenting on it, and will in the future remember to always gut and clean the fish when I catch it, not when I get it home.
Needed a better way of storing the Bokashi mix(it was in a zip-lock bag), and settled upon an empty XL1 sports drinks container. (The normal 650gram container won’t take the full 1Kg bag, though. On the other hand, it’s a handy size for sprinkling the mix, and the lid IS pretty darn tight)

== October 23. ==
I left the bucket to rest over 3 weeks before taking it out on the verandah and dumping the contents into a plastic container I had prepared with alayer of soil and lots of dead plants. I mixed itup a bit and covered it in more soil. The compost in the bin was pretty much a solid block of decomposing organic mass, with very little recognisable.
I think I may have overdone the first layer of B.M and used too little lateron in the process. It’s cold outside(hovering near zero in the day, even snowing sometimes, but on the underside of the transparent lid on the container, there are now large drops of condensate. I take that as a sign that there’s some activity in there.
My home-built bucket may or may not work. I have yet to be able to drain a single drop of compost tea from it. It’s possible that the contents are too dry(mostly teabags… ) or that the lid isn’t tight enough so that it allows evaporation.
Now to clean my Bokashi bin and prepare it for use again.

Hello friends!!

I’m from Mar del Plata city, Argentina, and want to share with you my R&D to build up our window farm project.

I’m part of the Zeitgeist Movement Mar del Plata, and we were invited to a  Free Science Expo, in which, besides windowfarming, we exposed other sustainability projects, as solar heaters, earthships and parabolic ovens.

The model was mounted in a metal framework, because we had no windows or walls to attach the wires.

I’ve used twelve 1.5 Lt Diet Coke bottles, with small cups inside. The reservoir is a 20 Lts bottle.

No alligators to hold the bottles to the wires. We holed and linked the bottles with the steel wire, and that was ok to support the weight.

A 5 Watts airpump is used: airlift works like a charm, up to 2 meters.

From a week to today, the plants are growing ok!!

The species we are showing (and growing!) are:

No direct sunlight unfortunately, but the species I’ve picked, are very strong and with the artificial lighting of the showroom looks to be ok.