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'