A couple years ago I decided I wanted to brighten up my dorm room a little bit. I figured bringing in some plants would be a great way to freshen the air a bit and provide some color to my room (several of my posters are black and white). I wanted to do something different, and I wanted to grow something useful. I figured Salvia Divinorum or Kratom might be fun to grow. Since I had a little bit of experience with hydroponics beforehand I started looking for windowsill designs and before I knew it I had discovered windowfarms!
They're truly a great idea, a clever utilitarian spin on the concept of vertical farming. Your windows become vertical garden beds and your capacity for growing increases dramatically. And in terms of hydroponic systems, they don't get much simpler than this. It can be a little tricky to get the air lift water pump system to work properly, but once it does it is remarkable how effective it can be given what it is composed of.
It consists of some upside down plastic water bottles with a window cut out of the side of them, and a small netpot placed inside (some water bottle shapes hold the netpots better than others). The netpots are filled with substrate and the bottles are strung together, connected with string and rubber hose. An air pump at the bottom carries nutrient solution from the reservoir up the hose to the top, where it drips down each water bottle, along each plants substrate and over their roots. You can get most of the stuff at a hardware store or online.
Pretty much all you need is:
- An aquarium air pump (with multiple outputs for multiple strands of bottles)
- Empty water bottles
- Netpots that fit your bottles
- Expanded clay pellet susbstrate
- Some poly tubing 1/4"
- Some T-joints for said poly tubing
- A aquarium check valve
- Paint
- Some kind of container to use as a reservoir
- Some string to hang the bottles from
- Silicone to seal the bottle caps and tubing with
- A drill bit for the bottle caps
- A sharp knife to cut the bottles with
- Some zip ties to attach the bottles to the string with
- A timer for the pump and one for lights if you need them
- Whatever else you need to hang the bottles up. Don't underestimate how your plants and substrate will weigh when fully grown. This applies to your selection of string too.
Long story short, I tried to use jiffy pucks for my substrate in the netpots, and they happened to be used jiffy pucks that may have had residual rooting hormone in them, which probably killed the strawberries I was trying to grow. I still haven't gotten around to trying it again but I want to soon!
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