As east coast gardeners wrap up for the season, The Windowfarms Project has just unveiled two new home-sized hydroponic garden kits just in time for the holidays. The system allows anyone with a window and moderate sunlight to grow almost any edible plant under the sun, despite below-zero temperatures outside. Originally a web-based social collaboration experiment, The Windowfarms Project has brought together over 15,000 citizen scientists interested in designing for a better good.
Britta Riley’s Windowfarms are modular, vertical, drip-hydroponic systems that repurpose landfill-bound 1.5 liter bottles to provide a low-cost solution to year-round indoor food production. By setting this system in your window and giving it an organic nutrient solution and a little maintenance, it is possible to grow almost any vegetative or fruiting plant year-round. Not enough sunlight coming through your window? No problem! Try full-spectrum CFL bulbs (maybe with a Bright Idea Shade to reduce that glare) as supplemental lighting. As you experiment with your Windowfarm, you are encouraged to contribute the blossoming Windowfarms Community, where questions are asked, designs are proposed, and almost anything related to urban agriculture and hydroponics is discussed.
Long-time Inhabitat readers may remember our coverage back in 2009. Just over a year later, the project’s extensive userbase has developed almost every type of hydroponic Windowfarm imaginable. The importance of this success goes beyond basic hydroponics for your kitchen or bedroom. Riley and the Windowfarms team have successfully implemented their experimental R&DIY model, crowd-sourcing internationally to answer pressing environmental problems — presently, the inaccessibility to locally grown food in the seasonal urban environment.
So get on board and get your Windowfarm kit today!
+ The Windowfarms Project
+ Our.Windowfarms
