Getting Ripe!

Just a couple of pictures of my bell pepper and tomato plants as they are ripening, I was home this weekend and figured why not take some pictures. Pardon the quality, I only had my phone camera.

Design Changes and Alterations

Constructing and tweeking season is over, and for the time being, this is the final iteration of my windowfarm. We were having issues with the pump giving out on us after the water level dropped an inch or two in the large sized wine bottles due to a design flaw (The needle was sitting three or four inches above the base of the bottle, leaving little volume above the needle; consequently making it stop as soon as the water was too close to the air outlet). Considering the amount of work that it would take to fix this flaw, we figured we could again try something different, and actually increase the volume as well. I thought of using a gallon of jug-wine instead of a traditionally shaped bottle, and we thought that drilling a hole would be better than severing the whole bottom (which only caused immense algae growth without a plant to block direct light from flooding through the open reservoir top, previously).

In my rush to pack before moving back into school, I was unable to build it, so my parents took over early, as was the initial plan, and my dad made the modifications. It has been working, apparently flawlessly, for the last month now. These are the first pictures I was able to take since the modifications. As well, there have been some modifications to the room that it is located in, and now gets even more light than ever due to a more permanent, and ideal placement. Also, an issue arose with the graduated tower, and due to the small volume of plants, we chose to take it out of commission for the time being (with intent to get it working again in my dorm room). So the tower is full of plants. The strawberry that I had planted in a 4-inch net pot would not fit however, so we decided to start dabbling in DWC, and you can see our little set-up at the bottom. It is simply a net-pot hanging from a mylar covered lid in 2 gallons of nutrient solution with a couple airstones in it. Due to some rain, and the construction on the room before that, it hasn't had time to really 'pop' yet, but it is doing well, and I hope to see it really start growing in the next weeks.

Here are some pictures of the new set-up:

Bottom left corner you can see

where the strawberry is.

Some mint, if only I drank, mojitos all around!

My basil, twice cropped. Last time we made some pesto,

and it was the best pesto I have ever had!

Just a few of my romano tomatoes, this thing is

wrapping around the whole system, it is huge!

And a lot more flowers all over the place.

One of my two jalapeño plants, starting to flower!

My bell pepper with two little peppers getting nice and big!

A couple broccoli plants getting real big!

New reservoir, no algae, no pump problems.

Aerial of the strawberry DWC.