Window Garden 🍃

A window garden is a homemade garden in your house. You can grow plants and vegetables by a window like the image below. All you need for an easy homemade window garden is a plastic water bottle, soil, wood and some water.

Some things you can grow in a window garden are:

Green beans
lettuce
root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, Green onions etc.)
herbs (dill, rosemary, thyme etc.)
Strawberries

Window gardens are useful in winter when plants outside die.

Our plants we decided to go and there height.

Green beans: 22cm
Celery: 15.2cm
Basil: 12.3cm
Coriander: 17.5cm
Thyme: 21cm
Rosemary: 26.1cm

HOW TO BUILD A WINDOW GARDEN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3WwfBCdDzc

Our Window Garden

1.) Our plants grew very well. Our first green been stated to grow and the stem thickened increased on all plants. We saw a drastic change in height in most of our plants especially in our rosemary plant. It grew from 26.1cm to 37,3cm. Our rosemary is our quickest growing plant however we don't think it is great to grow in window gardens as we weren't sure on how tall it grew. In a window garden it doesn't have as much space. However it could adapt to the conditions and we are starting to see it grow along the sides. Our Thyme grew from 21 cm to 25,3cm. Our coriander grew from 17.5cm to 22,1cm. Our Basil had a small growth from 12.3cm to 12.9cm however the leaves are getting bigger and there are more basil leaves forming. Our celery grew from 15,2cm to 19,6cm and our green bean also didn't grow much from 22cm to 23,4cm however this is because the stem is bending near the top and growing on an angle. there is clear evidence of growth as the first bean started to grow. Besides the Rosemary we think all our plants are great for window gardens especially basil as it doesn't grow to high.

2.) We believe that our plants will not completely die but will not be healthy upon return from the holiday. They would not have grown well over the period of time as we will not provide the with any water which will affect plant growth and little water consumption could lead to the plants shrinking severely our wiking rope system should provide enough water for the plants to survive, but over the extended holiday without getting the correct amount of watering we could easily see drooping in our plants.

3.) We decided to make a few small changes to our window garden after the installation process. The biggest change we made was that we decided to change our soil as after the practicals and we came to the conclusion that it was not good for growing plants. It was not nutritious enough. The next small change we made was that at the bottom of our pipe we added 2 holes. The one hole was to big and water would go through the system too quickly. We came up with a plan and covered it up with some tape which did the job well. Our final change is that our hole to pour water in the bottle was to small so we chose to cut the top off completely. At the end we think our design was very good and the thing that makes it so great is that when we pour our water in some water sits in like a pocket and slowly drips and our garden is also sustainable as we can take our collected water and pour it back in. This is good for the plants as there is nutrients in the water and this saves water.

4.)

Matt: I have learnt the essence of teamwork throughout this project and especially during the installation and conservation processes. The process of building and maintaining a window garden has been fun and I have highly enjoyed checking up on our plants and watching their growth over time. Watching plant and herb growth is truly a wonderful task and I have learnt so many important factors that could influence whether they will become fit to eat or not.

This process has been made so easy by my incredible partners as we have worked as one unit from Day 1. The most important component I have learnt during this process is the importance of water and how without it growth will dramatically change. We as a group have worked extremely well here and have taken shifts in all our lessons to provide water and maintain our plants and herbs in our window garden in the hope of providing them with the best possible chance at survival.

I am very excited to get back next term and assess where our plants stand after a month without water. I hope that our plants remain healthy wich would have most likely proven]d difficult but this would highlight the teamwork and cohesion we have built and maintained throughout this project in the hope of creating the best Window Garden possible.

What an incredible experience this has been and I have built stronger relationships with the amazing guys in this group who have all tied their strengths together and have created one of the most memorable school projects that we have tackled thus far. 🙂

Dylan: During this project I have learnt a lot. I found this a very enjoyable way to learn as we interacted in building the window garden and working on the blogs. I learned a lot about plants and soil when searching up on what is the best for our window gardens. I learned a lot more during this project than learning it out of notes. It also taught us to work as a team. We had a few problems along the way which we sorted out due to our good teamwork. We distributed the work load evenly and all put in max effort.

When it came to last minute needs our source of communication was very effective as we put together a Whatsapp group. During lesson we would all work together in making sure our plants had been watered, measuring the plants to track the growth and taking photos. It was very cool to see how well our plants grew and how felt very good when our design was successful. We put a lot of work into it and I learnt that I can trust my group members which is a very important fact in and out the classroom.

No one slacked of during the process making it extremely easy to get all the work don on time. I also learned how important soil is in this project. Before I had no idea of the importance pf soil.The 3 soil practicals that we did, changed our window garden completely and through this we learned that our original soil wasn't great as it lack a it of nutrients which I learned from Practical one where our water was very clear. This could have affected the growth of our plants and success of our window garden. I also learned a lot about plants and didn't know that plants grow well next to each other. We put this into place for our window gardens and researched which plants grow well together. This also helped a lot to our Window garden. I think this was a great way to learn and was a very fun experience and one day I could build a window garden at my home using the knowledge I got from doing this. 🙂

Kieran: I have learnt doing this window garden project that the only way a group can function well is communication and teamwork. Without those essential part we would still be on blog 1 and designing are window garden. When it comes to maintaining the window garden we need to trust each other to go in our own time to water the vegetables and herbs that we are growing this was all thanks to trust and communication if someone couldn't do it then we told each other on a WhatsApp group (our main method of communication) and someone else did it for the day and so on and so forth.

For maintaining it we had a shifts so one of us would water while others did other work and it would change daily if they was a problem for more than one person we communicated that through our phones and someone would go help. I have really enjoyed this entire project because we were able to learn a lot about the farming culture and how everything depends on small things to work. A good quote for this would be 'all is one and one is all' (I don't know who first said it). Meaning one thing depends on a whole host of things but that host of things can't work without the one. 🙂

James: For me I have learnt about communication and teamwork in the window garden project. We all had our part to play to ensure that our window garden would thrive and prosper. We all communicated well when it came to maintaining the window garden and watering it, so we could ensure that the vegetables and herbs that we have chosen to put in our window garden would grow and maintain a healthy life. We all worked well when it came to producing the window garden and everyone bought the things we needed to produce the window garden, which really helped. This was where once again we communicated well.

We made a train when it came to putting the vegetables and herbs into the window garden, so we had one person watering, one person putting the seedlings into the plastic bottle and so forth. We all worked well ensuring the work was done. We have all taken shifts to water the plants and we have all worked well together when it came to the communication of watering the plants. I have learnt with this project that communication and teamwork is key and I felt as if we have done this from the get go.

I have really enjoyed working with my group and we have worked well in producing and maintaining our plants. I feel we have all brought our individual talents to the table and we have made a fantastic group and it has been really fun. I have learnt a lot about the importance of soil and how you need the right soil because all soils have different levels of nutrients in them and certain plants need certain levels of nutrients. I have also learnt about the importance of water and how you must never use too much or too little water. You must really be nurturing with the vegetables and herbs. This has really been a great experience. 🙂

The following images highlight the start of our plant growth journey and the installation process: