Window Garden

Window garden

How did our plants grow?

Our plants were relatively successful and we had success with the beans as we were able to produce a bean. Our other plants (tomatoes and basil) weren't too successful as the leaves started to die and we were unable to produce any tomatoes.

Bean plant

Basil plant

Tomato Plant

We think that our choice of plants wasn't particularly good for the classroom environment as they require a lot of water which was not good for this window garden as practically we could only  water them a little once a day. Also we think there was too much heat on our garden in its position. This caused the leaves to get burned, and also the garden to dry out too quickly. It may have stopped the tomatoes growing also.

Predicted holiday changes

We may encounter some problems as there would be no possible way to water them in the holidays and we feel that there is a high possibility of them wilting and we don't think that they will survive the holidays which are longer than two weeks. We think the only plant with a higher chance of surviving the holidays is the bean plant as it requires the least water. We think the heat in the classroom, especially as it is closed for the holidays, may kill all the plants, which would be disastrous.

Design features and modifications

We have made no changes to the design of our window garden and feel that the reasons the design was so successful was because of a combination of James Flint's fishing knots which have kept the garden very secure and has had no chance of breaking. The watering system is also very good as the pebbles we have, have allowed for the flow of water through the bottle and then to drip onto the next plant. This has used water very effectively, without much waste. It would have been ideal to move our garden into a cooler spot, but we have not found a suitable place. We think the design has worked of the garden, but the actual plants may not have been ideal, and the position in the classroom also less than ideal.

Individual reflections:

James Flint:

I think that this task was extremely interesting . The building of the actual window garden was very fun as we had to problem solve and think out of the box on how we were going to tie and hold the fishing line around the vertically hanging window garden. The designing of the window garden in class was another very nice group part of our window garden and we all put in our personal ideas and designs of different window gardens.

After the challenging yet fun part of constructing this window garden I thought we were just gonna be relaxing in class but it was actually the opposite. The more challenging part was dealing with the intense heat and sunlight and our plants came close to dying quite a few times.  Perhaps for future we would choose more water wise plants and check up on them more regularly

Overall I think this was a great project which we all contributed to equally, which we did efficiently and without fighting with each other. I also think this has gotten us ,and the whole class, to think about the future and how we need to become independent in  small things and this can just be the start...

Daniel Neuhoff: 

This task was very enjoyable and i learnt lots of good things from it. My favorite part of the project as a whole was definitely the building process. it was interesting, challenging and tested our craftsmen-ship and creativity. Everyone got to take part and it was a successful process. 

i thought that most of the work would be finished after building the window garden but it had only just begun. Maintaining the garden is definitely the most important part of a successful window garden. The maintenance is difficult as sunlight and temperature are uncontrollable and it is crucial that you give your plants the correct amount of water.

I believe that this is a good task especially as we are dealing with food security. window gardens allow people to grow their own food at a cheaper price than to but each individual item at the store and it takes very little space. All in all the window garden is a good simple solution to improving food security if you are prepared to maintain it.

Sebastiano Panieri:

I have learnt a lot from the process of maintaining and building of our window garden. I particularly enjoy designing things, and I liked that process very much. it was fun to actually build the garden and there was a creative and technical part. We went to a nursery to get ideas about how to hang plants, and that's where the idea of hanging them came from, and the knot system. But it was more tricky to have the strength in the rope ( so we used fishing tackle) but as we were building it we had to change it to carry the weight. I particularly enjoyed the construction part. I thought that this would be the difficult part, and the maintenance easy, but it was the other way around.

I thought that it was going to be much easier than it was to maintain the window garden. We were not expecting heat and sunlight to be such an issue, and this was a threat to our garden and basically almost killed our plants I don't think we gave enough thought to the actual plants. My sister had a book about vegetables, but we chose the ones available rather than reading the book. Next time reading the book may be useful!

Fixing filtration issues

I have learnt the fundamentals to being able to sustain a successful window garden and how these methods can really help to improve the world wide issue of food security. I have learnt that food security is much more difficult to solve than it seemed at first and have now been taught about it it has showed me the true scale of the issue and what we need to do to solve it.

testing filtration system

What I realised is that we think the problem is to build a system, and while that is a part of the problem, the harder part is to sustain the solution. So it is not building the farming system, but keeping it alive that is an issue. This is really important as it takes alot of education to help people know how to keep plants alive. In communities and in South Africa we will have to keep teaching people how to keep the plants alive. Our garden grew one bean, which would not be good enough if we needed to survive from it. I realised it was much harder than I thought, and this is a big problem in managing food security as so much knowlege, education and practice is needed before people can learn to live off what they produce.

Maybe if had read this we would've chosen the right plants.

Final touches

Happy to be Finished!