New Delhi:
A kitchen garden inside your room? Yes, that's what the new
concept of 'vertical landless farming' promises where you can grow
tomatoes, chillies and small plants inside rooms - and without any
hassles too.
New York-based Britta Riley, a woman artist and technologist has
devised this system for people living in apartments.
Using discarded plastic bottles to grow plants, Riley claims her
technology can produce over 25 kinds of in-house plants.
The garden set up was demonstrated at Deutsche Bank pavilion at
the ongoing Indo-German Urban Mela (fair) in Indraprastha park in
Delhi. The device is attracting many curious visitors.
"It is called the window farms hydroponic farming system," a
volunteer told IANS while showcasing the system.
The plastic bottles have clay balls inside which help the plants
stand erect. The bottles, one placed on top of the other, are
housed in a long transparent plastic container with a tall
'reservoir' at the bottom. The reservoir is filled with water
mixed with liquid nutrients for the plants, and tubes leading from
it connect to the plastic bottles containing the plants.
A pump periodically shoots up the water from the reservoir, which
then trickles down from bottle-to-bottle bathing the roots along
the way. Water and nutrients that are not absorbed, collect in the
reservoir and are pumped through again at the next cycle.
Once you sow the seeds it takes one to two weeks to turn into
plants, the volunteer said.
For imitating sunlight, red, green and blue bulbs used in
aquariums are placed around the setup.
The system is useful for people who would like to grow their own
vegetables, the volunteer said.
It is a low-cost system that allows city dwellers to grow
vegetable and other plants in a typical apartment window
year-round, said the volunteer.
The Deutsche Bank pavilion has introduced other interesting
systems too - like a Solar Impulse Aircraft that uses solar energy
to fly.
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