By Suzanne Ma
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CHINATOWN — Urban gardeners don't have to risk life and limb — and a city fine — to grow lettuce, beans and baby bok choy on their apartment fire escapes any longer.
A new invention, designed by two New York artists, give city dwellers a chance to grow vegetables in the confines of their apartments by installing a drip system made from recycled water bottles along the inside of a window pane.
The system, called a Window Farm, can hold up to 25 plants and grows anything from broccoli and cherry tomatoes to herbs like basil and rosemary.
"I just wanted to be able to grow some of my own food in my own apartment," said Britta Riley, who, together with colleague Rebecca Bray, came up with the Window Farms concept.
"I didn't have any dirt. I didn't have a lot of extra space. So I thought 'why not just use this vertical plane of the window to try it out?"
The goal is to allow New Yorkers to experience growing their own food all year round. In February, Riley and Bray began to build and test the first Window Farms prototype as residents at Eyebeam, a not-for-profit art and technology center in Chelsea.
They talked to botanists, scientists and architects, while poring over hydroponics research conducted by NASA and marijuana farmers.
They wanted all the components necessary to build a Window Farm to be available in New York City, "from your local hardware store or your recycling bin," Riley said.
"We're exceedingly dependent upon other people and how that has manifested is that we have no idea where our food is coming from," she said. Growing your own food "makes you so much more aware of what goes into the vegetables that we're eating. It's also about having a nature experience in your apartment."
The pair completed the first prototype in April. A water pump on a timer periodically pumps water and liquid nutrients from a reservoir installed below the window to a reservoir installed above the window. There are small holes drilled into the underside of the top reservoir where small drip valves let out water and nutrients into a column of plants.
Today, there are about eight Window Farms either up and running or in the process of being installed in New York City apartments.
In August, Joanna Burgess built a Window Farm in her Chinatown apartment.
She spent $170 gathering materials in the East Village, from a hydroponics store in Brooklyn, and from plumbing stores in Chinatown. It took a team of five people about eight hours to install it.
Soon she was able to enjoy the vegetables of her labor: from the recycled bottles strung up along the inside of her window facing Mulberry Street, Burgess was able to grow two kinds of lettuce, broccoli, silver sage, tri-color thyme, rosemary, and two kinds of basil.
In September, she harvested her herbs and made a quart of pesto.
"We made homemade pizza," she said.
But two weeks ago, Burgess noticed her vegetables were dry and wilting. Within a week, she lost half of her crop. The plants weren't getting enough water.
"It takes a lot of playing around with so if you're not a gardener," she said. "But on the flip side it's actually a lot easier than gardening in soil because you don't have to worry about climbing out in the fire escape … or running around your house and watering everything."
Riley says that perfecting the Window Farm is an ongoing process.
"They are viable right now but they are not as efficient as we want them to be," she said. "There's plenty more testing to be done."
