Okay, here’s a hint at what my little vertical patch will look like.  If I get all the glueing right…

A slightly different approach, one that will need only one straight piece of tubing from the pump to the top (bottom left to top left), and has a built-in reservoir.

The upper floors (3) are 63mm PVC-U, the reservoir is 90mm.

Moveable hanging windowfarm we made for demos

This demo model was all about portability. It has much in common with a standard reservoir setup, but we needed to be able to move it out into the main space so we could show people how a windowfarm works while also being able to put it back in the window most of the time so it could get light (and grow HUGE!!) .

This model came before the move to sewer pipe reservoirs. We used the same suspended tupperware reservoir technique we used in the first prototype that we built in my apartment’s kitchen window.

You can’t see it in this picture but the “plumbing” is detachable and can be moved separately from the plants. We suspend a tupperware reservoir above this windowfarm and use a bucket on the right at the bottom to recapture the liquid and house the pump. We drilled holes through the side of the tupperware container up top  and attached individual tubes to the reservoir (tricky plumbing!). The individual tubes dangle down into the top of each column. The “recapture” tube you see at the bottom attached to the bottom dowel drained into a 5 gallon bucket that also housed the pump (on the right, not shown). The pump in the bucket is attached by a long tube to the reservoir up top, closing the loop. 

We made it portable by creating a removable frame for the bottle columns. We hung one dowel rod from another dowel rod with tension cable, creating a loose hanging frame. Then we hung each strand of bottles from a dowel rod at the top using the fishing wire technique. There are holes in the recapture tube, into which we insert the tube at the bottom of each column. We tied the recapture tube to the bottom dowel with zip ties.

 It was so exciting to just pick the whole thing up and move it down the hallway! It’s light enough for one person to carry even with these big plants.

These plants were all started from seed in February. The lettuce loved the cool early spring. Look at how bushy that blackseeded simpson got (mid left). There are also cucumber (the yellow flowers at top left), okra (maple-looking leaves mid right) , green beans (top right) kale (bottom right) and cherry tomatoes (bottom left), jalepenos, and Japanese Eggplant (bottom right big leaves) in this system. The cherry tomatoes,  jalepenos, and okra are just now ripe in early August. Beans keep coming- super tasty, crunchy, and sweet. The lettuce went to seed and started tasting better about after about 2 months of churning out georgeous new leaves constantly when we picked them.  Aphids and a weekend when I left the pump off (OOPS!) killed the eggplant. The cucumbers were a real mystery. Like Marilyn and James Dean, they died a young tragic death after a short, but full life. Read their sad story here. Someone else please try cucumbers!

Images

See some initial research here

In my previous post I included some sketches.

In a nutshell I want to grow an herb garden in my kitchen window. There is a pair of vertical pipes immediately to the left of the window that I can clamp lights to (not shown in drawing). I’d like to have large diameter tubes to hold the net cups and two water lines, one for feeding the plants with low flow drip emitters, and the second for drainage. I’m thinking PVC or maybe even really strong cardboard tubes. I’m thinking of ditching chinning bars and setting the tubes into U-shaped holders like what supports the garment bar in a closet. If I can find off-the-shelf hardware for mounting tubes that would be ideal, or could custom make them out of plywood and screw them into the windowframe. The resevoir and pump will sit on the floor in an enclosed plastic tub, possibly inside of a wooden box so that my little ones can climb on it without damaging the resevoir and pump. I’d like to design without a second resevoir up high. I’m not sure yet exactly what drip emitters to use, but will decide on this in the next couple of days.

My main question at this point is do you think a second resevoir up high is necessary? I wonder if I could replace the up-high resevoir with some kind of pressure flow regulator?

The company that I have bought drip irrigation stuff from before, Dripworks, provides free consultation services. I plan to contact them this week and see what kind of advice they have.

I’d really appreciate suggestions about materials and design. I’m more concerned about making something funtional, serviceable, and strong and am willing to sacrifice some aesthetics. The window where I’m installing this is not a main light source in our kitchen which is why bulky tubes are acceptible. I may need some help precision-cutting the tubes when the time comes.

Here are a couple of sketches of what I’m going to try to build.

I’ve picked a not-that-sunny window in my kitchen, and want to build a system for growing various herbs that my wife and I like to cook with – thyme, basil, oregano, marjoram, cilantro, parsley, etc. I think I’m going to try nasturtiums too. I want to avoid hanging things vertically, and am thinking of three angled tubes with holes cut in the top for plant cups. Inside the large tube will be two tubes – a 1/2″ feed tube with some kind of drip emitters attached at the top of each cup, cups will be in some kind of tiny funnel, at the bottom will be a second drain tube. Hopefully all that will fit in a 4×4 square or round tube. I’ll have some kind of lights on either side of the windowframe to supplement the low natural light.

Feel free to contact me if you have questions about the design. I’m researching both how to apply drip irrigation parts to a vertical system like this, and whether there are eco-friendly alternatives to PVC as a building material.