Well, not being able to grow anything at the moment has me feending for some sort of garden.  i did some research on the internet, and stumbled across DIY window farms using hydroponics.  The idea intrigued me, so i read up on it and hydroponics a bit, and decided to give it a try.  luckily we have a great hydro store here in tel aviv, so i went over there to scout out what sort of equipment was available to me.  turns out they had everything, thus me now thinking they are great.

So the idea is you take a regular 1.5 or 2L water bottle, turn it upside down, spray paint the bottom half, drill a hole in the top, and hook them together.  then you put a hole in the top of the bottle for the plant, and you water it from the top down.  Follow?  No, well, these pictures should help.

to get started, i masked off the bottom of 8 bottles, and spray painted the top of them

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then you remove the masking tape

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and drill a hole in the top of the bottle

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and then they screw together

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and you put a hole to fit the plant inside

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once i got everything stringed together and set up, this is what the final product looks like.

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here is a view of how it drips back into the bottom holding tank

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here is what the plants grow in.  they are clay pellets that are supposed to help retain moisture, and give the roots something to grow in.  because you are dripping the nutrients right onto the roots, the idea is that they will not grow as long, and stay short and more compact, ideally.  i think over time they do still grow long, but we will see.  at the moment i started sage, thyme, chard, kale, tomato’s, beans, basil and arugula.  i want to see who performs well in this system.  im sure herbs will be fine, but i want to test larger plants too.  im having trouble sprouting my kale seeds though.

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since there is no soil, all the food the plants need are in chemical form.  so here they are.  i mixed them into the bottom holding tank

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and here is what the pump looks like.  initially im running the system on for 15m and off for 15m, to see how things go.  i think ill be able to cut that way back, but im a little worried once it gets hot out.  so ill be monitoring this.

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about a week an a half ago i started a bunch of seeds in here.  so far i had three plugs sprout, so i moved those out and put them under lights. the plugs are coco coir, and inert material so that once they go into the hydroponics section they dont affect it at all.

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the light is to help them get a good start on life.  i vancouver with marginal light, i found that if starting seeds, this helps way more than anything.  my plants wont be getting much direct sunlight, as this apartment is facing the wrong way for that, but i think they will get enough.  but either way, they will get off to a good start.

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so ive been soaking some mint for a month or so, and with no nutrients, its just been growing crazy long roots.  i decided to use two of these as test subjects in the system before i get real plants in there.

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to start i gave them a hair cut

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and plopped them into a basket

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and in they go.  mint is so resilient and invasive, im sure it will do fine in the all water system with food finally.  here you can see water dripping on them as the system is running

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one last thing.  if you look right outside the window, theres two trees.  the closer big leaved green one is of interest.  note, we are 5 stories up.

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i reached out the window, and took a picture of these flowers that the tree is currently producing.  anyone want to guess what type of tree it is?

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did you get it?

its an avocado tree.  eventually ill just reach out the window and pick some avocados, is the hope!  😛

some questions i have that i hope to be answering is how much water is lost due to evaporation?  technically you use way less water, as water is not lost in the soil.

how well will the plants performing overall?  im using the mint as a test case versus just in water vs in soil.  but mint is a bad test subject.

either way, ill be learning a ton.

and eventually ill be able to take pictures of them all in here.

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