Window farming!

Foodshare's receptionist, Arelys Fernandez, has been experimenting in her apartment with window farming.  She hoped to explore this as a self-sufficiency option for low-income people.  She sent the team at Foodshare this update earlier this week:

"For those of you who wanted to know how my second attempt of my hydroponic Windowfarm project was coming along, here is where you can find the pictures. 

"I have been growing these plants from seeds since September 8^th, and I have transferred the baby plants just this past Sunday!  I have two different tomato plants (one of them is from the seeds of the purple tomatoes Alicia brought in from her garden), 3 mint, 3 broccoli, 1 lettuce, and 2 spinach plants! I checked the plants this morning and they are happy as can be and the root system of each plant look healthy.  I wish I could also send you the video I took on my phone but it says the file is too large, but I will work on it, or you can pay me a visit!

"I started doing this project in hopes to find a “solution” to those in need of food.  I had hoped that it would be cheap enough to do, but it wasn’t (I spent an estimate of $110, and that’s because I didn’t recycle the water bottles used to grow the plants in, I went and bought them).  An individual with SNAP benefits would be able to get the seeds at no cost.   It would however, be a cool idea for agencies that have space (a nice sunny window) to grow their own produce.

"If you are interested in trying this out for yourself you can find the step-by-step instructions at: http://our.windowfarms.org/ and download the free multilingual windowfarms v3.0 instructions.  I would be happy to help you along the way!"

Arelys also took a short video of her window farm: