Anaïs' Window Farm

This is my urban gardening log

[anaiswindowfarm]

Late update

Hey! It’s been a long time… In the summer of 2017, during the month-long holidays, my poor plants all grew lanky and I had no choice but to kill them… I then decided to take a break because time was a bit short in this period.

I thought that I could just put pots on the Ikea shelf, instead of the whole hydroponics system. I decided to finally test growing fruits under the Ikea grow LED lighting… a failure.

I don’t have photos but I can tell you, these lights cannot support the growth of vegetables… Even the very small ones.

I tried Islandic Tomato, known for being compact and productive, even in “cold” locations. In the Ikea system, it grew so badly, I thought the variety was to blame… until I put the pot in front of my window (a few centimeters away from its original location), and then WHAM, it grew splendidly! It’s now in bloom, I’ll see how it bears fruits (or not). But it’s gorgeous.

I tried Yellow Canary cherry tomato too (similar to the Red Robin variety) because it’s dwarf and productive. I am now waiting for the only 4 fruits that managed to grow on it to mature, so that I can get rid of the (very decorative) plant. I definitely blame the lights for being too weak!

I also tried eggplants and peppers (both sweet and hot), that in light of the recent events I have put it in front of the window too, we’ll see what happens to them. I don’t know for the eggplant but I know the peppers are easy and forgiving, that’s good news!

And I tried the usual suspects: basil, parsley, cilantro, chives, plus a new one that I only recently discovered : Brède Mafane (a spicy herb that grows in the Pacific areas and feel similar to a dental anaesthesia… though it doesn’t make the tongue numb at all). I find that in pots, as I can’t take care of my plants as thoroughly as I would like, all of them seem a bit unhappy. I’m going to try again in the Ikea system since it gave me the most happy herbs I have ever managed to grow!

And that’s all for now. I’ll post photos of the process!

[anaiswindowfarm]

Windowfarm 4.0 / roots

The chicory roots started to form such an intricate network that I had to trim them: I couldn’t get the pots out of the tray anymore! I had no choice but to cut them like a savage... 3 days later, it doesn’t seem to have hurt the chicory at all.

On the other hand, the basil and arugula roots look healthy but not invasive. Good guys!

[anaiswindowfarm]

Windowfarm 4.0 / first harvests

A row of 3 chicory pots gave me a large 2-persons salad for dinner (twice), and the basil I decided to trim and freeze, to enable ramification. They both tasted as good as their organic, soil-grown counterpart that we eat in Italy in the summer... :)

So far, I am convinced!

[anaiswindowfarm]

Windowfarm 4.0 / first winter

January has come and gone, and the plants are looking great! The wild arugula pots still look a little bit empty, but I have good hope for the next few months. The chicory is thriving: I could have harvested it at least twice since I planted the seeds! And the basil makes for a pretty color contrast. 

So far, I am very pleased with the result. I’m waiting until spring to see if the system is truly viable (which I don’t doubt anymore), and then I’ll but the complete 3-tiers set. I am so excited, I can’t wait!

The only thing I’m not really happy about in this design is the light: even though it’s LED, I find it stupid to use electricity to grow plants. I was OK with the air pump in my previous attempts because it was on only 1 to 3 hours a day, but it feels kind of wrong to use power like that. Well, I guess since this setup will actually allow me to harvest and eat the result of my work regularly, it’ll be worth it! The last attempts were so unsuccesful: in total, I harvested half a handful of cherry tomatoes, a bunch of chili peppers, 2 very very small bell peppers, and some basil...

[anaiswindowfarm]

Windowfarm 4.0 / first update

I had a lot of trouble finding some of the information I needed, so here is what I gathered:

First, the list of what I bought.

Setup: 1 cultivation insert set (15 slots) + 1 grow light (46,5 cm) + 1 light fixture (55 cm)

Growing media: 1 pack of starter plugs + 1 pack of pumice stones

I didn’t buy the greenhouse, seeds or nutrients because I already have all I need. This very basic kit cost me around 79 €.

This setup can contain 4 to 5L of water + nutrients solution, depending on how many pots are used. With 5L of solution and small sprouts, I have enough for 2 weeks + some leftover that I use to water my regular plants.

Right now, I’m pretty pleased with how things are. The basil is getting large, and the italian chicory is already huge! I think it’s around half its mature size, so harvest is not too far... As for the wild arugula, it is still slow to grow, as expected.

If things continue to progress this way, I’m going to buy the whole system and add a “test tier” with cherry tomatoes, hot peppers and wild strawberries. I chose dwarf varieties, that’ll hopefully give results.

[anaiswindowfarm]

Windowfarm 4.0 / Ikea

Resolved not to have a windowfarm during the next few years, I have boxed and stored away every tube, pump and pot that I wouldn’t need in the meantime. BUT THEN, I saw on Ikea’s website that you can now buy a simple, low maintenance hydroponics system. 

Needless to say, I now own one. I bought a single unit, fit for 15 sprouts. The plan here is to test the setup during the worst season of the year, and if conclusive, buy the rest of the kit.

I would love to have a system in which I could plant cherry tomatoes, peppers and beans, but the Ikea design only allows plants with very small roots to grow. I guess I’ll eat way more salad now!

Here is the test setup, with 4 weeks old sprouts (purple basil, italian chicory and wild arugula). 

There’s also a lazy moth resting under the light!

[anaiswindowfarm]

Windowfarm 3.0 / goodbye

Well...I installed the 3.0 aquaponic setup in February, and uninstalled it all early in the summer, for various reasons. Mainly, because the water in my aquarium wasn’t rich enough in nutrients...

I wanted a low tech fish tank, close to the ones called “poubellarium” in french. The principle is quite simple : the plants and fish are part of a filtrating cycle, for a self-cleaning tank. And no electric devices are used. Following these rules, I chose to make a tank with endlers, shrimps and snails, plus a lot of plants for a good oxygenation (keeping in mind that the aquatic plants and the aerial plants wouldn’t take their nutrients on the same level).

WELL. It was a good idea for a tank, but not for an aquaponic reservoir : the water was way too clean, and the aerial plants would’nt thrive... On top of that, the tubes kept clogging and/or getting lose.

So i decided to unplug it all and try later...

[anaiswindowfarm]

Windowfarm 3.0 / The fish

The last few weeks, I had the pleasure to aquire a dozen endlers and their babies, a dozen shrimps, a few melanoids and some tiny ramshorn snails. I love staring at them, which makes me late for work every morning. And since the tank is almost on the floor, I break my back every time... But it’s worth it ! :)

I chose to make the most natural aquarium possible, to spare electricity and really respect the fauna and flora. The only electronic devices I use are the themostat to keep them all warm, and the air diffuser for the night.

The shrimps, snails and plants (aquatic or not) take care of the filtration. I’ll add a few zooplankton species later on that’ll help them too (and conveniently serve as snacks!).

The roots, dried oak leaves, alder cones, catappa bark and green clay that i put in it, either for decoration or to lower the pH, have colored the water a bit, giving it a yellowish, cloudy aspect.

Anyway, I think the fish and the shrimps like it better that way : they would be too exposed in a crystal-clear water. And the shrimps are really, really shy.

And if you’re interested in natural aquariums, you should definitely check the poubellarium movement :)

[anaiswindowfarm]

Windowfarm 3.0 / Aquaponics

Rebooting my windowfarm for 2016, I decided to go with a more efficient and water preserving system: aquaponics. I read a lot of good stuffs online about this method, but what motivated me to get going is the comfort of it. No more will I have to sit by a reservoir, wait for it to slowly drip in a bowl, refill the water, add nutrients, and repeat for each bottle. 

The only problems are that 1) my setup is no longer mobile, 2) I had to downsize quite a bit to reduce the weight of it all (from 21 pots in 5 columns to 12 pots in 4 columns). 

The water is cycling at the moment. In a month or so, when it is ready, I’m going to add the fish! Since my tank is a bit small (60L), I decided to go with endlers, red cherry shrimps and a selection of snails.

The water is dripping more than ever in this third version :)

[anaiswindowfarm]

Windowfarm 2.0

Since the last posts, I changed the system twice.

At first i replaced my 2.5L and 4L tanks. I didn’t really understand the whole airlift concept and thus, didn’t manage to get a stable system. Every other day one of my tube would bubble back in the tank, and I didn’t get as much water in the tubes as I wanted to... I could have improved it but i didn’t really know how at the time.

I reluctantly decided to go with plastic soda bottles. It wasn’t as ugly as I thought, after a coat of leftover wall paints. It was so efficient that I switched my timer from 15 minutes every hour during daylight to only 2 to 4 times a day... Success !

My plants thrived, but purging the system the way I built it was a pain in the ass. A lot of pros, a lot of cons.

Also, since it was my first hydroponic crop, I made a lot of mistakes. First of all, I mismanaged the nutrients : I thought I needed to switch from growing nutrients to flowering ones only when flower buds started to show. By giving my plants mostly growing nutrients, I encouraged them to develop in size but not to start producing fruits... Except for the hot peppers who gave me a dozen of bright, very spicy fruits!

I realized my mistake in September 2015. Having on top of that a recuring problem with aphids crippling my plants, I decided to harvest what was possible and kill the rest, to reboot my system in the spring of 2016.

In this second version, I added a few more pots, but uncoated for lack of motivation... That was the stupidest idea of all, because the pots kept absorbing all the water, leaving nothing for the bottom plants! Using linseed oil allowed me to coat the pots (even wet), solving the problem at once. And, it was way easier than the bees wax technique I used in the first version of the farm. My hair dryer almost died on me that time... What is great about linseed oil is that you can use it to protect wooden objects AND to make clay pots impervious to water (and thus, much more resistant to frost). It is also edible, so you can finish off the bottle in a salad dressing!

I also decided to go with rigid black tubings, the kind used in micro-dripping systems for the garden. The only translucent parts are the necessary flexible zones (top and bottom of the system). It significantly reduces the clogging problem!

Except for these ones, all of my photos are on the disk of a dead computer. As soon as I get my hands on them, I’ll post them here...

[anaiswindowfarm]

I bought nutrients in a very convenient hydroponics store nearby (that I suspect have very few kitchen gardeners among their customers). I wanted organic nutrients so the choice wasn’t vast : I went for Biosevia’s “Bloom” and “Grow”.

I don’t really manage pH yet, but I intend to, soon. I have a few pH bands that are a pain in the ass to use… It takes forever and isn’t as precise as I’d like. I’ll buy an electronic tester but I’m a bit scared of its fragility. So, right now all I do is add a few drops of “pH down”, because I know my pH is too high. I get a nice rich yellow on my bands, and for now it seems to be OK.

[anaiswindowfarm]

So this is my setup : 4 columns of hand waxed terracotta pots, filled with clay pellets and a tiny layer of sphagnum moss at the top for the roots, covered in another layer of clay pellets. The moss is great : it stayed moist a whole week when at first the tubing didn’t work at all. Handy for holidays or a breakdown ! Besides, 2 month later and I still have no debris clogging my system.

It all hangs on ropes from a mobile ikea coat hanger, with 2L and 4L reservoirs. I chose to go with one reservoir per column, after I read somewhere on our.windowfarms.org that it helped both managing nutrients, and reducing contamination if necessary. They can provide enough water for a whole week, with a 15 minutes every hour program. It’s set from 6 am to 9 pm + at midnight, and then at 3 am. I wonder if it might last even longer if I cut it down by half, say for holidays ?

As for the tubing, i went for the submerged T-joint system, maintained by a suction cup at the bottom of the reservoir. It took a few weeks for me to tweak the system and have something working ! My nerves suffered badly, but in the end I found the way to make the magic happen... A simple T joint with 30-ish cm of tube to get the water in, a semi “plug” at the end of it, AND (super important) a mini “tap” (half opened) somewhere between the water intake and the T junction. It was the only way I got the air to know it’s really, really not a good idea to go back the tube. It still bubbles back from time to time but all in all, I’m really proud to have achieved that !

Now for the plants : I’ve decided to go with seeds, instead of buying grown plants (also a tip I found on the site). I put them directly in the sphagnum moss, with no nutrients in the tanks. I don’t think I’ll do it again, though, unless I have to reboot my windowfarm entirely.

 These one didn’t really work : only 1 in 5 borlotto beans seeds produced a decent sprout, due to the excess of humidity that caused almost all of them to be part-covered with moss/mold. On the plus side, it grew really fast (I mean FAST). I kept 2 out of 9. The peas seeds had a lot of mold too, and only one in 5 or 6 sprouted. French beans didn’t work at all. The seeds melted... Zucchini seeds didn’t work either, but they at least remained whole (easier to clean up).

On the winners side, the salads and herbs grew more or less fast : roman lettuce, spinach, chicory, nasturtium, arugula, mint, sorrel, basil (though only one in a huge lot sprouted, because the seeds were very old), coriander, and thyme. And I ended up with a few cherry tomato, bell pepper and eggplant sprouts, though the big winner is cayenne pepper : 14 seeds sprouted. I think I’ll have enough of them for a decade !

[anaiswindowfarm]

This is my setup !