Hello, I’ve attempted my first window farm this week as a prototype for class. It’s been a bit difficult to find proper supplies in Hong Kong due to language barriers. Challenges and questions I’ve come across while exercising my poor engineering skills. I will be using black socks to cover the bottom of the bottles.

1. My seedlings have already been attacked twice with aphids and fungus gnats in it’s growing plugs. I had to start a fresh batch. If the seedlings are already so sensitive to the  moisture and humidity, how soon will my window farm be attacked by these pest? Anyone have experience with handling this in a humid country?

2. My tubing is too stiff to direct it away from the seedling. I’ve seen some systems using a toothpick or wooden chopstick, but my result was a moldy chopstick. I ended up using a fishing wire just to hold it down and a tape to keep the tube in place. I obviously need to find a better alternative. 

3. Reservoir problem. Due to the limited space in HK, I don’t have the luxury to have a big bottle for reservoir so I attempted to use a ketchup bottle on the bottom. I found the tip was a good way to plug the tubing in (I still need to reinforce it with plumbers tape, but haven’t found it yet).

4. Cutting through plastic was the biggest challenge.  I am not a very handy person, but I attempted to use the drill to make some holes on the bottom of the bottles but the bottom is thicker than the rest of the bottle, so I am not able to cut through it. In the end, I made a big circle but the bottles don’t fit perfectly. Any suggestions? I thought about using sticks to reinforce it.

5.I wanted to try out using water beads instead of clay pellets. Anyone have any success in it?

I’ve recently finished my second windowfarm project with fourth grade elementary school children, and I’ve discovered an incredible new world. After seeing  Britta Riley’s TED lecture, I figured I really should try and build an aquaponic windowfarm system with the children I teach.

The difference this time was that we’ve decided to go at it as a project based course (PBL). 14 meetings, 75 minutes each. We’ve started by planning the system together, acquiring the materials, building the system- including a wooden hanging rack, taking care of the plants, the fish, and the pumps. After the system was set up we’ve started following the plants’ growth. We’ve had 2 columns  running to a fish aquarium with 5 goldfish, and one column with a bucket with water and fertilizer. Each column had different types of plants to compare their growth rate. The children were in charge of everything – taking care of the windowfarm, following the farm as it evolves (plants & fish), documenting the process, and finally presenting all they did to their parents over a glass of farm-grown mint tea .

It was an incredible success.

I’d love to share with you some of the insights

Nadav

Hi-  Myself and our school botany teacher are looking to purchase several kits for our students to put together and grow food over the winter.  I can’t find any pricing on the website.  Is there a contact to get this info or somewhere on the website to find this?

-Tina and Jen

I am a student teacher who would love to build a lesson plan or unit using the window farms.  i will be teaching hospitality and tourism and think this would work on so many levels.  i’m looking for some more imput on how to start the process.  thanks

HELLO

I am so excited to start this project at my school in New Jersey.

I went to college visit, saw this project, and fell in love with it.

My school is pretty good at students to be aware of environmental issues. We once had this competition of coming up with the ideas of conserving energies at school, etc.

Anyways, I am soo excited to start this project!!

Hello Out There!

I just purchased a kit for our classroom and was wondering if anyone has done this project with 2- 3 yr. olds of course with parents helping?

Hi Everyone,

I’ve really enjoyed reading all of the posts and getting an idea of what people are doing.  I’ve finally just completed building my first column, following the excellent directions provided by WindowFarms…Version 3.o…they were quite clear and the photos were very helpful.  I do plan on building three more for my apartment, but since this is the first one I just wanted to test it out for a bit.  My apartment has a large south-facing window, and so I did not build an additional light column because I don’t think I’ll need it.  I did, however, follow the example set by others and cut two holes in the plant bottles instead of just one, so I can grow two plants per bottle.

I will be out of town for a large remainder of August, and so I’m reluctant to start growing anything yet, since I don’t know if I’ll be able to replenish the water reservoir on a timely basis.  However, that means I have some time to plan what I want to grow, and I’d like to experiment with companion plants.  Does anyone have any suggestions for good pairings?

My goal is to have a 4-column window farm in my classroom this year (I teach 9th grade Biology, among other things).  I’m hoping to help my students build it themselves, as well as guide them in designing their own controlled experimental set up for the window farm.   If there are other teachers out there who have done this sort of thing, I’d love to hear from you and find out what worked, what didn’t, etc.

When I first saw this website, I thought it was great on so many levels. My group of friends store food ,and growing some indoors year-round fits in with that concept of thinking about the future ,when the country may suffer food shortages. As a 6th grade teacher, I am going to have the students build a class windowfarm of their own.It will be fun to see how they troubleshoot! My setup  is not an airlift system. I am experimenting with a reservoir on top that drips down 3 containers to a receptacle at the bottom. I’m using a perlite/vermiculite  mix without net cups that I prime with water first. The drip is very slow and I hope it will stay wet enough until I get home from school to recycle the reservoir. I won’t have plants in the farm until I get the drip speed down. I want to thank the person who suggested using a 5 gal. reservoir on a single outlet pump. I have a double outlet pump for my next windowfarm which is an airlift. I couldn’t find needles, so I used a ” T’ connector with a single outlet and regular airline for the airlift tube. The middle of the “T” is connected to the check valve and air supply, the other ends are connected to the airlift tube. The “T” comes in where the needles would have been. I’ve been able to get 5 feet of lift with this “make-do-with-what-ya-got” setup. Thanks to everyone for  all the great ideas and comments and to Britta and company for the movement.

I have been working with the air lift system version in a workshop for the community at a local library here in Denver as a collaboration between Denver Public Library, Denver Urban Gardens and Artstreet. Byers Branch Library  provided the funding for 11 people to build and bring home a windowfarm.(Amazing!)

We made a few alterations to the original design & so far it’s working just fine. Instead of using an air pump and the air needles (I tried this way too but had a hard time getting enough power to get the water to the top) we used submersible pumps. The challenge here was having to get a powerful enough pump to raise the water 3-5’ that isn’t too powerful. We used the Active Aqua 160 gallons/hour. This pumps far more water than you need so in order to slow the flow down a bit we clamped the hose (not too much to make the motor mad).

Another small adaptation we made was recycling old 2-4″ bedding pots instead of the official hydroponic net pots. We used hole punchers and utility knives to make the holes.

The people who attended the workshop were thrilled about this design and vision & the whole workshop was a blast. We built community while building window farms.

Artstreet makes a window farm for their classroom with students' help.

Getting ready to cut

This mother and daughter team build together using a potpourri of recycled jugs

All Done!

Thank you for all your great research, ideas and collaborative spirit!

I am working with 3rd-5th graders on growing plants hydroponically in their classrooms.  Before attempting the full windowfarm structure, I worked with my students to build individual hydroponic systems using the hand-pump and water-wicking system.  While the hand-pumps we built seem to be working, our yarn-wicks are not wicking any water up…

Any suggestions on materials (other than yarn) that works well for a wick system?