we didn’t have paint and tape on hand, but we have a lot of beautiful fabric to protect the roots!

The Dakar farm (jardin suspendu) is coming along great! We are almost all assembled as far as the columns go but still deep in the research with the pumps. Now we are focusing on muscle powered mechanics. More docu photos coming soon.

I put together this webpage: http://www.frontierlab.org/jardinsuspendu as I needed to be a bit more official than blogging for my communications.

As you may know, the World Social Forum is taking place in Dakar this coming week. The art space where our farm is located will be part of the forum and open throughout that week.

I am preparing a large info poster that will stand next to the farm. It will include a french text, plan diagrams and some docu of our open workshop weekend that was held 2 weeks ago. I will also of course include links and info to the Window Farms network.

Additionally I will make a presentation about a number of open projects and networks, including Window Farms during a session at the forum on Feb. 9th in the afternoon.

If anyone has any advice or further questions about this, don’t hesitate to get in touch! If you’re in Dakar for the forum, drop by!

As well, I will create another hanging garden in the small French village St. Nazaire le Desert from the 1-4 July. Anyone going to be in the neighbourhood or want to take part? Let’s talk!

Picasa web album (help, I wanted to embed the slideshow, any tips?

We are now in the middle of a 2 day , open, public building session for our Jardin Suspendu (window/wall farm) in Dakar.

Yesterday we collected materials, cut bottles, made diagrams, made innovations for connecting the bottles, made our columns, made some root baskets out of old coffee cups and explored different dripper options.

Alot of people passed by to help us cutting and building and to find out mroe about the project. We didn’t have the possiblity for printing, so I made some large diagrams of the plans, which really helped as visuals when we explained the growing circuit.

Today we are assembling, with the reservoirs (we decided to go for 2 pvc tubes) and going to get some plants, then we will tackle the pumps. We have a lot of people passing by all the time, its nice to see so many curious faces!

Sorry for this slideshow of images, I don’t have much access to internet these days. We have so many electricity cuts. So using picasa and the captions on each photo is the fastest was I could find the get the stuff online.

comments welcome!

I will go find the plants today. I am kind of clueless still about the pumping (we prepared a fermentation bottle, but don’t know how to hook it up) and how to feed the plants nutrients.

Do you guys think the coconut fibre, or pieces of coconut shells might work instead of clay pellets?

Here in Dakar, I’m working with the artist collective L’Espace Timtimol, planning for a hanging garden on the inside and outside of the front garden wall. Following the “Bad Fruits” project by artist Pascal Nampémanla, that approached in an artistic way the problematic of plastic bottle trash, we have decided to take things a step further, getting practical. We found the idea of Window Farms really great, especially since we have a huge pile of bottles already collected. One problem we have with the project though is that the plans that are provided on the site all still include alot of specific gardening and other new, store-bought materials. We think we can go even further towards sustainability by replacing many of the listed items with things we find or fabricate ourselves using bits of plastic bottles and other “waste”. We even want to research into how we can power our pumping system without direct electrical current. I’ll do my best to keep blogging during our production process. Today I just found an old washer fluid pump from a car and am looking for ways to power it with an alternator and a bicycle, or even maybe the swaying of the tree branches.

Anyone have any brainy notions on where we can all get 1.5 liter poland springs or Deer Park bottles that have been discarded?