Penta-Tower in Full Swing

  So the school I am doing my student teaching at had a snow-day yesterday, but my biological clock being lined up with that schedule... I was able to get a lot done, including transplanting everything that was ready/ that I wanted into my newly functioning Penta-Tower!  I finally got it to work a couple of days ago, and had left it pumping since, to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and after three days it seemed consistent enough to plant in.  I filled 23 out of the 25 spots in the tower, because the two plants I had remaining are ones that I will likely need a little more space than the two remaining open planting sites.  I have taken a picture of each tier, though it may be difficult to see the plants, it is impossible to get around the sides and back of the tower.  So here are the pictures, I will list plants in each tier in clockwise starting with the back center plant (sorry they are crooked):

 Pea, [empty], Lettuce, Lettuce, Lettuce

Pea, Broccoli Rapini, Purple Basil, Basil, Basil

[empty], Broccoli, Edamame, Pencil Pod Bean, Pencil Pod Bean

Red Pepper, Eggplant, Red Pepper, Eggplant, Yellow Pepper

Armenian Burpless Cucumber, Roma Tomato, Bean Tavera, 

Lettuce, Edamame

And this is my portable tower, now a little more reliable and in full swing.

Lettuce

Straight Eight Cucumber

Basil

For more regular plantings updates, please visit myFolia.  

Namaste, and Keep Farmin'.

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Fog Culture

The first type of hydroponics that I was ever really introduced to was the AeroGarden.  I never had one, but someone mentioned it to me somewhere along the lines, and that was the first time I started looking into hydroponics.  I didn't want to spend the money on an AeroGarden though, and couldn't think of a way to self-engineer one easily, and so shelved it altogether.  Time passed, I was turned onto Windowfarms, look back for the rest of that story, and now in my reading, and regained interest and aeroponics are again in the forefront of my mind for methods.  Though I have since learned A LOT more about things, and know that the spray nozzles used clog up very quickly, and are relatively expensive, and kind of a pain to set up.  So I started thinking about a similar but different way of doing the 'grow in air' method.  Eventually, I stumbled on a video that used a decorative pond nebulizer to create a nutrient fog.  Then a couple weeks ago when I was ordering books for the semester, I got side-tracked looking at these nebulizers, and finding them relatively inexpensive, I ordered one.  The only problems with it are: the thing used to float it at the right depth is plastic and styrofoam (but I am dealing because it is at least a plastic that shouldn't break down easily), and it has a bunch of blue LED lights on it (blue is the most useful color of the spectrum for plant and ALGAE growth, and roots are used to the dark).
So I had this thing, but the two problems kept me from using it, trying to wait until I came up with solutions to the problems.  Then my portable tower, which I had recently transplanted a cucumber and lettuce into, stopped pumping unexpectedly in the night.  So in the five minutes I had the next morning, I dropped the plants into the fogger, extremely wilted, on the edge of oblivion.  When I got home from school, hours later, the plants seemed like they had even grown a little bit!  So I said screw it for the time being, and decided to plant in my new Fog Culture set-up.  It has been running for a day now with four plants from my seedlings in it, and they look great.
So here are some pictures:

I used a paper bag to catch the copper debris, 

and a saw blade to push against.  This was a pain,

copper doesn't like saws because of it's malleability.

Traced a net pot with dry erase marker for the guide.

3" hole saw = much easier and faster than a hand saw.

 Clockwise from back center: eggplant (3), cantaloupe (2),

butternut squash (1), watermelon (3), and we had a mango 

last night, so I am trying to germinate the pit in #5.

The ominous glow from the side of the basin, oOoOoOOo

Thick, thick fog, hard to do justice with it open, and via photo.

You can see how bright that sucker is though!

So that is that, a new water culturing technique to think about and play with.  The plants seem to love it, I just added nutrients today, hopefully they will love it even more now!

The Penta-Tower is also now functioning in full swing.  I moved the Tri-Towers from my parents' house here, so they are ready to plant, or refurbish at any point.  With those came the pump that I had been using, which is a rather heavy duty fishtank pump, with a five outlet splitter with nice metal valves.  I was able to easily use that to pump the water as best as I have yet seen in the new tower, and it pumps down to 4 gallons (~1/2 capacity).  I also have the portable tower, and the diffuser running on the same pump.  Once I reintroduce the Tri-Towers, I hope to run them on that pump as well.  And I have begun transplanting into the Penta, I have the whole bottom tier full, but ran out of cheesecloth (instead of netpots), and figure I will wait until it is full of life to put up pictures.

Continual Summer

In a 4' x 4' box that is.  I have made the final mechanical/ structural/ functional changes to my new Penta-Tower nook, and am honestly surprised that I got it pumping, it stands just shy of six feet tall.  I was fiddling with a new adjustable pump that I got just for the sake of getting this tower working simultaneously with my others halfway across the state, and no matter what I tried it didn't seem to work well, at best I would have the most proximal drip site to the lift tube pumping sporadically.  Then I figured I may try my other pumps, and with a magical little pump that I found in my basement from a long retired fresh water fish tank and had not ever thought would be the best one, it maintains a consistant and pretty hearty drip rate for all five drip sites.  It is hard to gauge if it will be sufficient for the number of plants I will have, but I plan to arrange the plants from least thirsty to most thirsty descending from the top.
I have also upgraded my lighting.  I had planned on using these old industrial 150w HPS lamps that we had lying around my house from years ago.  And as I got one working, I stumbled across a much better option at my local hydroponic store Green Path Garden Supply, it was a 150w HPS as well, but a whole unit, including a reflector hood, contained ballast, and a more attuned bulb for growing with.  It also outputs 1600 more lumens than the ones I had, and had the benefit of not being 20 years old.  I have since learned a bunch more specific information about lighting, and think that this will likely be the last HPS I buy, aiming for a well attuned LED assortment next, but I will likely learn how to wire one up myself to achieve the best output for the plant use, and that'll take a little time.  Though I certainly do not regret getting this lamp, it is like having my own personal summer in the middle of this unfortunate New England winter, I have even started to get a tan just from working on the tower in the nook.  Some of the wattage may be a waste on the plants, but my health is the overarching aim, and I certainly feel much better than I normally do at this time of the year.
Anyways, I have a bunch of pictures:

What I came up with for a reservoir, like 1.5' tall.

The three beads below handles mark approx. 4, 5, and 6 gallons

surprisingly well.  It pumps with 4.5 g and up (that I have tested).

The lid is just a piece of copper that I had left over from something

that fit perfectly with some trimming.

 This is what I came up with for the airlift using natural materials,

I have actually replaced this tube with a more evenly curved piece of copper.

 Using my diffuser, and a 3/4" tall base cut from a beer bottle, I steady the needle.

I have punched a hole in the lid for the tube, and plan to cut 5 DWC sites in a

star formation around for better water reclamation.

 I do not yet have the time or materials to get the glass drip ring working,

so I fashioned one instead with copper, and a brass fitting

 The standing set-up (sorry this is the best I can do for a 'full' shot)

And that is the magic pump on the right.

 A perfect nook for my portable farm right next to the window, on the sill.

And all of my sprouting little plants!

 My best aerial shot to show everything in the nook.  HPS mounted on right, facing the tower with a couple feet of clearance.  Orange tree DWC just under the lamp.  

The view for passers-by!

I had initially planned on placing my large vine plants (cucumbers, butternut, watermelon, cantaloupe) in the DWC sites that I will be drilling in the lid, but fear that when they fruit they would slurp up all of the water and cause it to stop dripping, so I will be putting those in the bottom most drip sites instead.  If I can get some strawberries, I may put those down below.  For specifics on what I am growing and growing progress please visit MyFolia.  And as always please visit Windowfarms.org, and, our.Windowfarms.org, and join in on the building R&D-I-Y community over there!

Bubbly and Shiny

Just a few updates, plans, and additions. 

I have upgraded my DWC a little bit, and have a new addition to my hydroponic endeavors. So I have wanted to get some dwarf citrus trees to supplement my fruit diet with fresh organic versions of my favorite tropical fruits for a while, but this orange was not exactly planned. I have been attempting to propagate a clone of a pineapple from the top portion since last spring (failing every time due to the pineapples being too long off stalk I assume). The first time I attempted it, I put it directly into soil. It quickly shown signs it was not alive, and I threw it away, leaving the pot underneath the trash bag in my dorm room. A couple weeks later, a little seedling sprung from the soil. I quickly remembered having dropped near the trash, and been unable to find a seed from an orange I had eaten at some point prior. So even though fruit propagation is rarely from seed, I figured why not, it was already growing, if it worked, great, if not, I would move on to buying one. I needed the large pot it was in for something else though, so I transplanted it into a Dunkin Donuts cup, it grew algae and then became summer, so I transplanted it into a larger pot and kept it in the summer sun, it didn’t grow much (if at all), then my dad needed that pot, and transplanted it into a meager 5" sq. pot where it has rested for the past semester, not really doing anything unsurprisingly. Then I got into DWC and figured, what better to try in such a stable and optimal system, than the tree which hasn’t done much in any soil.  So I asked my local hydroponic store owner about it, and he had the same why not attitude as me, but recommended an additional supplement if I hadn’t already purchased, humic/ fulvic acid. He grows a bunch of lemon trees in pots and says they respond very well. So, I have now transplanted it into a 2 gallon bucket with a four inch net pot, and a two airstones. And I have a single 25w CFL directly on it using a desk lamp. If it were going to die, it should have by now, so the waiting game has begun!

Here it is, leaves are healthy, roots haven't grown noticeably:

Airline input:

On a similar note, I had a revelation when I was washing my saw-cut bottles surrounding some potential air diffusers for DWC systems that are made of natural materials and won't clog like airstones.  Following are a few of the drawings I scribbled down to remember the designs. Figure 2 and 3 are four half bottle bottoms, with the openings facing up, and capped with a full bottle bottom.  F. 3 is illustrating my thought of running the air in from the bottom of the reservoir, through the center of the four half bottle bottoms, hitting the 'cap' and then ideally bubbling off in a few directions.  F. 4 is illustrating the same function, but with the delivery of air into the bottle structure from the top.  F. 5 and 6 are aerial views of the structure, 5 being six inverted bottle bottoms and one not in the center, and 6 being four non-inverted bottle bottoms.  

The following two images are my incarnation of these ideas, similar to F. 4, though I added additional caps on top, to hopefully further air diffusion into the water.  I connected the bottles and copper air delivery tube using 100% silicone caulk, which is what is used in aquariums to seal the seams.

And lastly, I went ahead and boxed in my newest tower using reflective film.  I oddly have a window in my closet, and don't particularly want people on the street seeing into it anyway, nor am at a loss without the window light.  So I used a large box that my kitchen table came in as a mounting frame for the primary background sheet.  I then laid some on the sides of the newly defined 'room.'  And finished with mounting a piece along the top of the window fram that drapes over the top of the backdrop piece.  

And this is what all of my neighbors get to see as they walk by!

Though it will be substantially brighter once I get my lighting rigged up.

I hope to get the whole thing functioning and assembled over the weekend, and start transplanting plants from my existing farm, so I can move those here sooner than later.

There's Water in the Tub

So as of the first of this year, I have moved into a new apartment with a good friend of mine from home.  We are both pretty into WindowFarms, particularly in their potential practical application in providing a  complete, fresh, organic diet for a person free from the limitations of exterior conditions.  My goal since before being introduced to WindowFarms was to become self-sustaining, within average limitations; not necessarily becoming a farmer, maintaining a similar or better quality of life, spending similar or lesser money than purchasing food.  Around the time that my friend pointed me to WindowFarms I had been thinking about how to best utilize window light, though my design wasn't remotely as elegant as what the WindowFarms team has been coming up with, and I wasn't yet thinking of using recycled materials.  I came up with something like this:

I was thinking more of an ebb and flow design, using large diameter PVC pipe on a slight incline.  I was planning on wrapping the whole structure in mylar, but still there would have been a lot of blocked light, and overlap with a system like this.  And there is the whole plastic thing, which I hate.  

With the basic mechanical design provided by the WindowFarms team, I turned my focus to the materials, and condensing of my system, while getting the hang of hydroponics, and just developing a mass of supplies and techniques for making more assemblies.  With the recent move, me and my roommate now have the space to move on to the original goal I was aiming towards, growing all of my own food.  We only have five months though, so we are aiming kind of low for the time being, maybe all of our food for the last week or month that we are here, and if we manage that, then I will aim for the whole next year with supplemental food from my summer gardens.

So with this new aim, we need to greatly increase our plant numbers in the WindowFarms.  I currently have three functional systems, two nine bottle modular towers, and my portable tower described in the last post.  Initially we planned on two more triangular modular towers of twelve wine bottles cut to half length (I had a number of people collecting wine bottles for me over the past couple months).

Going back to my First Steps I quickly realized it wouldn't be so easy to use my original method.  It being winter in New England, it is really cold, and considering the heat and cool method I used, I thought lighting bottles on fire in sub-freezing temperatures wasn't a particularly good idea.  So me and my roommate got thinking, and figured possibly doing it in a bathroom would work; not much flammable material, good ventilation, and we figured if there's water in the tub, then we are all good if something on fire were to fall from the bottle.

Though, I also planned on cutting the bottles in half, because the plants seem to never fill the full bottles, so I could save a bunch of space.  I had yet to have success doing a half wine bottle with the burn and dunk method.  So I thought maybe the novelty of no power tools was wearing thin considering my time constraints (I don't really have anywhere to cut bottles here in the apartment).  I commented on potentially buying a wet saw to my parents and come to find out, my brother had one all along.  So I collected every bottle in the house and spent a few hours over new years weekend cutting and washing them all.  While this is for a different end, This Process is the same as what I did to cut the bottles in half.  Be wary when doing this, it makes a lot of glass slivers, I had one stuck in my toe for two days because I stupidly didn't wear shoes.  It's also really messy, sprays water everywhere.

It comes out really clean, like this:

After moving in, we started laying out the bottles to design our new towers.  Between the length of the bottles, and the new S-hook suspension system that we used on the portable farm, we figured we could fit twice as many bottles in the same vertical space as the previous systems.  After some thinking, and looking around the hardware store, we ended up getting a length of PVC and some fittings to make a hanger assembly to put the tower on.  I also grabbed these suspension clamps and threaded rods from a previous project after unsuccessfully attempting to do something like What This WindowFarms User Did with the reservoir on my portable tower.  And I thought they were perfect for hanging the rope from, with one modification, tying a string between the front two ropes to align them.  Unfortunately, this PVC tower isn't very sturdy, so I had to tie it up to a hanger rod.  Also PVC looks awful, but I plan to wrap it in mylar, so hopefully that will help.  As I was hanging the rope, I realized that with my new method I could expand beyond three bottles, and decided to go with five.  So here is my work in progress pentagonal tower:

As odd as it is, this window is in my closet, it is a north facing window, but we don't have many windows that get direct light, just one which the other triangular towers will likely be in.  This one is going to have supplemental lighting, likely a 150w HPS on for twelve hours out of the day, possibly more if necessary.  I am not quite sure yet how large this will be, currently I have the fifteen pictured here, and have added an additional two, I believe I have twenty five cut bottles, so I may do a full five tiers if it fits.  For the reservoir I plan to use a gallon apple cider jug, with some iteration of the airlift pump, through the same copper I have been using.  Once I have it functioning, I am going to box the system into only a couple square feet of floor space, completely surrounded by reflective film, aside from the window.

For the drip ring, I had a thought for an organic option while cleaning the bottles, specifically a Triple Sec bottle that I had cut the bottom off of.  I will use the bottom of a large diameter bottle as a small reservoir and distribution cap.  I will cut notches over each tower, and run wicks into the hydroton of the top bottle to guide the water as it overflows into the bottle.  Here is a picture of the rough pieces in place, and an illustration showing the goal:

The vertical tube is the lift tube.  

Dotted line is potential cover.  

Wide arrow is copper tubing, 

or wick leading out to towers.

I plan to sow seeds within a couple days, I will be doing my best to keep track of updates on their growth Here on Folia.  Please check out what I have planted, and help me think of some more seeds to pick up, me and my dad have quite a stash of seeds, which is what I am planting out of, but I am going to undoubtedly need some other things to create a more rounded diet nutritionally.  Particularly I need things with protein, any recommendations for plants are welcome, just please give some nutritional information in case I am not familiar, thank you all for reading!

That's all for now, Namaste, and Keep Farmin'