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'

My Portable WindowFarm

So after some thinking, some scavenging, and a little tinkering, I have completed the portable farm that I had mentioned in my previous post.  I have simplified the design quite a bit, and the proportions have changed some.  It stands a little taller than I had planned, at around four feet.  And the base is substantially smaller, currently at about four inches (I may add a small wooden base to make it a little sturdier).  The other major changes came in the reservoir, and in my suspension system.
When looking through the materials, I quickly realized that the size and construction of these posts from a previous project would work perfectly without modification.  When actually looking at the pipe, four feet seemed like the perfect length to fit a couple bottles with an adequately deep reservoir.  And even better than the size, the construction gave me an easy way to mount the system.
As a previous assembly, I had drilled two holes for a bolt in the top elbow bracket, which I thought was spaced perfectly for a single tower of beer bottles:

Also, the base has a fitting attached that allows it to screw into this mounting bracket:

After a little more scrounging through my cast-aside bottles and materials, I found a few bottles that seemed to fill the height very evenly (1 half length beer bottle, 2 full length beer bottles, and a full length wine bottle):

Once I had all of the major pieces in one place, I started thinking about the construction. Specifically, what would be easiest for transport, use, and explanation, while maintaining a very clean and neat appearance.  And this is what I came up with:

For the sake of explanation of the basic elements of a windowfarm, I used the same pumping mechanism.  It is a little hard to see, but out of the cork there is an inflation needle running into a copper lift tube.  Just below the photo is a check valve:

With a friends' help, I drilled an oblong hole through which I intended to run the lift tube.  It is a snug fit, and has the added bonus of fixing the reservoir bottle to the pipe, preventing excessive swinging of all bottles.  It looks like this:

On the top, I used the only plastic of the whole system in a small three inch piece of airline tubing to make the U bend in the lift tube.  I also drilled a 1/4 inch hole in the elbow to run this tubing through, guiding into the bottle:

The last change in my design came in my suspension system.  Rather than fixedly mounting the bottles in the tower, like my other farms, and previous designs.  I thought to hang the bottles using S hooks, a pair on the bottle, and a pair attached to the suspension ropes.  Around the bottle I tied simple nets that distribute the weight to the neck, but hang from the highest point, maintaining a low center of gravity.  These are easily removed for any reason:

And this includes the reservoir!  Finally I am able to flush the system regularly without hassle.  It is a little tighter, because the way the suspension works, pressure is applied on the ropes by the lift tube pushing down on the bottle, so with a full bottle, it takes some finagling.  But here is a video to show how easily it can be done still:

The final touches for this system will include the purely aesthetic addition of an endcap to cover the open elbow at the top, a potential horizontal carrying case for the bottles, and possibly switching to cheesecloth bags instead of net pots.  We plan to plant possibly mint, stevia, and basil in the system, keeping them all relatively trimmed and small.  Also, I was looking for some thoughts or recommendations on how to pump this system using DC power, like in a battery.  I want this to be as self-contained, and function-anywhere as possible, so any recommendations would be much appreciated!

Some Thoughts

Here at my school, we have a day where we are able to present projects that we have been working on.  People can bring in a trifold and set it up, displaying their work in a gallery style.  It got me thinking about how to miniaturize my system, so that I would be able to bring a model to events where I could promote the great work people have been doing.  Especially after missing an urban agriculture festival in the area.  So, I thought of this yesterday and drafted it out.  It is pretty rough, and the proportions are off, but it gets the job done.

For scale, the large piping will be 2" copper pipe (I have some laying around from an old project).  The bottles will be half length beer bottles.  I will tie it with two pieces of rope attaching to a handcrafted net of sorts around the bottles.  Within the 2"tubing, I will run my standard 1/4" copper lift tube, which will use an equivalent airlift mechanism to my other systems.  And while I drew the arm relatively lengthy, I actually plan on there being almost no distance between the two elbows.  I want the whole system to be under two feet high, be rigidly constructed, and easily transportable (continuing function, no spillage).  

Pardon the epic perspective.

I also want to start to do a little experimentation.  Since I have established a few farms, and have a base line, I want to start attempting alternative options in media, and method of hydration/feeding/aeration.  Whether I do this with an existing farm, or power out a third tower during my class break, I have yet to decide.  My design is that in a similarly constructed modular tower, I will have only one column that is a drip system.  My second column will be DWC.  The third column will be an electric free column; the bottles will be filled with a mixture of expanded clay and sand, and will be hand watered every couple of days (hoping the sand will help retain moisture).  Or, each level may be the various systems (i.e tier 1 DWC, tier 3 drip, etc.).  I'm not sure which to go with, I figure with columns the DWC will make it tilt, and with tiers it's hard to figure out the right configuration.  I plan to have three types of plants, with three of each.  One of each plant will go in each type of system; similar plants will compare the systems' efficacy.  I am thinking one will be lettuce, one a fruiting plant, and the third basil; this way I have a comparison between systems and types of plants.

If I am feeling really scientific (and it is still winter when I do this), I may even put it in a darker area, and put the system completely on controlled lighting in order to expedite consistent growth, so I can really have something to compare.  Just in the planning stages, thought I could put it out, see if anyone has feedback that I may use to guide my design.  I will keep thinking, and keep posting as I progress with everything.

Namaste and Keep Farmin'

Jalapeños and Some Dirty Tomatoes

I promise that this is it of the digital leftovers of my turkey day break, haha.
As I said a couple posts back, the two towers are getting separated out on here due to their upcoming physical separation.  This post is on Tower One, or the tower that I buit for my parents, and that will stay in it's current location (with any luck I can get my parents to actually put up growth updates come January).  And so with the theme of my parents caregiving, I have decided to give a shout-out to my dad's tomatoes which bested my tomato in our Hydro v. Soil competition.
So here they are!:

 Baby Toms!

As far as the WindowFarm, there are some bits of exciting news, but unfortunately due to the lack of sprouted seeds, there is only one new addition, an eggplant that is on the front side which I didn't photograph.  If you want a visual though, the eggplants in Tower Two are exactly the same.  All else gets picture:

Jalapeños!

 The other one, not doing so hot..

 Minty is coming back after being smothered by the tomato.

Basil down below, ready to retire.

 Bell pepper, surviving, but not thriving.

On a developmental note, since all of these changes, we have had some leakage issues.  And because of it my Dad is pushing for more DWC, possibly converting the whole tower by corking each bottle.  My concerns would be weight, and the need for twice as many airstones.