Here, I am going to highlight the nitty-gritty parts of the operation.

This is where it all starts.

For the resevoir exit, I drilled a hole in a rubbermaid and secured a small piece of tubing into it with some waterproof caulk. This small piece of tubing is then connected to the rest of the line by that funny white connecter doo-dad. Having a removable connection point makes cleaning very easy.

I find that I don’t necessarily need a check valve since the T-joint is significantly lower than the pump. I used to have one check valve for each line, but I found that the check valve restricted the one line quite a bit, so I removed it. After doing that, I found that the check valve line was much quieter. It seems that without the valve, I experience the gurgling noise. Hmmm

 

T-joint

A very simple setup here.  The resevoir is about a foot above the T-joint. This creates more than enough pressure, even when the water level is quite low. After the T, the flexible tubing continues for about a foot and then connects to the rigid tubing. To make this connection, all I had to do was shove the flexible tubing into the rigid tubing. No leaks! Easy.

Here’s the top of the farm.  I used zip ties to secure the rigid tubing to the chain. To get the coiled up, rigid tubing to straighten out, I boiled some water and syphoned it through the tubing. This allowed me to bend it and straighten it with ease.
I used to have some serious gurgling sounds. I found that by lowering the T-joint, I was able to get rid of them. No need for a silencer. The key is to make sure your tubing has lots of water running up it at one time.
One thing I really like about using these chains is that I can adjust the height of my pots at any time without disturbing the others.

Here is the bottom of one of the pots. You can see the net cups full of clay balls through the holes on the bottom. I thought I would have to plug up some of these holes so that water wouldnt be dripping everywhere, but (luckily) I was wrong!  By hanging the pots on a slant (see gallery), the water only drips out of one of the holes! This is another nice feature of the chain. I can change the angle or direction of slope for any pot at any time. So, what did I do about the bottom pot?…

For the last pot in the line, I poked a hole in a plastic bag, taped a piece of rigid tubing to it, and shoved a piece of flexible tubing in it. The tube connects straight back to the top of the resevoir. The net cup sits in the plastic bag. This is a simple solution that works like a charm. You can also see that the pot is hung at an angle.

This is where it all starts.

T-joint

The bottom of a middle pot

Pot-to-resevoir

Air Pump

Nutrient solution

Peter piper…

pot-to-chain connection point

resevoir connection point

Sideof the resevoir

Top of resevoir

Seedling Tray

Swiss Chard seedlings

Timer

A lovely tomato plant!

This is the whole setup

 

I have finally completed my windowfarm, and transferred my baby plants! So far it was neat watching the plants grow from seeds. I hope they bear fruit. I have 2 spinach plants, 2 different tomatoe plants, 3brocolli plants, and 3 mint plants, and 1 lettuce plant! I used the air T-lift system to get the water pumped to the top.

I started growing three tomato plants in my windowfarm using maxsea 16-16-16 plant food and started to notice that a portion of the stem is purple and the underside of the first two leaves are purple.  The new leaves on the top are perfectly green.  I read that this is evidence of a phosphorous deficiency.  I was a little conservative with the amount of plant food I was adding in the beginning but I’ve recently been using a 1 teaspoon/gallon of maxsea 16-16-16 in a purified water solution.  Is it wise to add a phosphorous supplement solution to my reservoir?!  I also have my pump watering non-stop.

My plants have grown a lot lately.
The paprika, tomato and chilli are getting so big that they almost cover each other and now I´m worried that they won´t get enough sunlight. I am considering cutting off the tops of the plants (to make them shorter and more stable) but on some online gardening communities they say that that is a bad idea because it makes the harvest late. But is that a problem? The windowfarm is indoors and I don´t mind waiting.Are there other reasons not to?

Do or don´t? Any suggestions?

My window farm is doing so well!  The plants have taken over my window.  I did a rough count and had 40 tomatoes growing!  Check out my video below.

http://youtu.be/lvDIZaK9GmI

Hello windowfarmers.   Here are some photos of our window farm and check out our video.  If you have any questions check out my previous posts or leave a comment.  Last night I harvested some basil right from the window and made pesto.  Love it!

link to the video http://youtu.be/mT11bXaqhhc

and this is our spec on how our air pump lift works.

February 10, 2012

Hi all!

I was in desperate search of more information for Plants I could grow, and I found quite a measure of information. I will just post all the plants I found information on, but not all of them can be grown hydroponically (like root plants). I hope I will be able to add even more information in time (please help gather more information which I can add) and it would be great to add a section ‘tested by window farms’ or something to verify the information.

Hope you want to help and have fun researching and using this information.

1.      Electro-conductivity (EC) or Conductivity factor (cF) can be expressed as either millisiemens (mS), cF or parts per million (PPM) 1 mS(/cm?) = 10cF = 700ppm

2.      The pH and electro~conductivity values specified here are given as a broad range. It should be noted that specific plant requirements will vary according to regional climatic conditions, and from season to season within that region.

3.      As a general rule, plants will have a higher nutrient requirement during cooler months, and a lower requirement In the hottest months.  Therefore, a stronger nutrient solution should be maintained during winter, With a weaker solution during summer when plants take up and transpire more water than nutrients.

4.      KNOW YOUR CROP.     Plant EC or cF may vary according to the stage of growth. For example, cucumber prefer cF 20 when establishing, and cF 25 after the first harvest. Between and 7 weeks after first harvest, the optimum cF is 17.

5.      For easy growing reference, plants that share broad groupings of low (L), medium (M) or high (H) can be grown together using the same nutrient electro- conductivity, providing middle ground cF and ph are adopted.

6.      The nutrient solution should be discarded at regular intervals. Should there be a requirement to flush the growing bed, the system should be flushed with fresh nutrients (run-to-waste) rather than water to avoid starving or stressing the plant.

 
The Column ‘Light’ is for the Day- / Night ratio needed (or helpful) for flowering
‘Water’ should someday contain Tipps how much Water (preferred in drip her minute or something) or just low, medium and a general description of that range here.
‘Sun’ will say how much sun/ Shadow the Plant likes
‘Tested’ If tested by someone in the commentary and maybe how hard it is to do it (in planing)
‘Groups’ (L,M,H) as described above, ‘Nutritions needed’ would be a suggestion of Nutrition Solution and other Tipps
Something in brackets (9) means a maximum or minimum not the optimal, something in brackets (?) with a question mark means that the sources said different things or suggested  for example that they used the same EC as for the Strawberries. So it is not born out of a sure source.
 

Read the rest of this entry →

I came here just in the right time to see cool mods like the t-valve technique (thanks @gaiatechnician), and the way of splitting airlift (credits goes to @kenokazaki) allowing two columns to be watered using only one reservoir and airlift. Read the rest of this entry →

Hello everyone.

I have posted a bunch of updates on my blog for all that are interested. There have been some problems with my window farm, mostly pH/nutrient lockout issues and algae.

There are still a few weeks to be posted, but I am slowly getting caught up.

Here are the links to the individual posts:

Week 3.1 - Planting the new column: http://melissawindowfarm.blogspot.com/2011/03/week-31-planting-new-column.html
Week 4 – Holy cow a BEAN!: http://melissawindowfarm.blogspot.com/2011/03/week-4-holy-cow-bean.html
Week 5 – Problems starting to manifest: http://melissawindowfarm.blogspot.com/2011/03/week-5-problems-starting-to-manifest.html
Week 6 – Bountiful Beans: http://melissawindowfarm.blogspot.com/2011/03/week-6-bountiful-beans.html
Week 7 – Attack of the algae!: http://melissawindowfarm.blogspot.com/2011/03/week-7-attack-of-algae.html

This gets me caught up to March 4. I have been taking pictures every weekend of my progress.

</shameless self promotion>

Ha ha, anyway, let me know what you think.

Thanks!!!

-Melissa

I seem to be a little impatient. I can’t believe the system’s been running hardly more than a week, with the pump arriving two days ago.

So, here we go:

The pump will need a proper cover against the sunlight, but I haven’t figured out an elegant way to make one yet. If only I had black aluminium foil lying around …

The mini cucumber has decided to rear its head, after careful deliberation.

wild tomatoes

The yellow wild tomato is well ahead of her red cousin in the background, but for a week I think the height they’ve reached without artificial lighting and in a window facing east is acceptable.

butterwort

And to finish off, my watchdog. No real dog – I leave that to Lorne – but a butterwort, charged with devouring fungus gnats, mosquitoes et al.

Cheers for now.