Window Farming - Seeds Germination and Transplanting

When I was young, I found a seed growing behind the refrigerator drip tray. I was curious and took the seed out and found it was an Orange seed which I had mischievously thrown behind the refrigerator. But how can an Orange seed grow in a Tropics? I replanted it and it died. Since then my only seeds germination was from a school project using Green Beans. 

Basil Seeds from Supermarket

Seeds Germination 

In the interest on Window Farming, I did some research and found that some seeds do need warm moisture in order to germinate. So I decided to try out using seeds from fresh chilli and Basil seeds from Supermarket, later on with fresh cherry tomatoe seeds, fresh Okra seeds and fresh Calamansi seeds. (fresh means seeds were taken from the vegetable itself). However fresh Okra seeds did not germinate at all. Maybe I did something wrong.

I wrapped these seeds in Kitchen Towel, sprinkle some water and placed in a Ziploc bag. I then placed the Ziploc bags behind the refrigerator and true enough the seeds germinated well after a week only Calamansi seeds took almost 10 days.  

Basil and Fresh Chilli Seeds

After a week Basil sprouted

Fresh Chilli seeds sprouted after a week

Fresh Cherry Tomato seeds sprouted after week

Fresh Calamansi seeds transplanted to egg container

Anyway I still went to the Supermarket and got few packets of seeds to try out. They are not really expensive, cost around NT30 to NT40 a pack. These seeds were planted directly into smaller PET pots.  

Lettuce seeded 6 days ago. Newly seeded Spinach and Xiao Pai Cai 小白菜 

Some plants seems to grow easily, a month ago we brought fresh Spring Onions from the supermarket. We used the green part and the white root area was planted in the soil. After a month without much sun light and it is growing well. 

Spring Onion after almost a month

Baby Bok Choi was grown from the vegetable, took the inner small stem and direct planted in the soil. This is after 3 weeks. I will discuss this Soda Bottle construction in another post

Transplanting

From the nursery egg container, I transplanted to a small PET pot. I did try direct seeding using the PET pots some grow well other was slow, Lettuce was growing extremely well.

My current method of transplanting to window unit is to place the small PET pot and fill with clay pebbles around it. It is simple and do not use much soil. On Windows Farming website, many had painted the bottle to prevent algae from growing. This is true but I have tested out using clay pepples so far for the last 6 weeks, have not seen any algae growth. 

 Using recycle netting 

Cherry Tomatoes from the nursery egg container using an ice-cream stick  transplanting to a small PET bottle

Cherry Tomatoes, never knew they have hairy stems and leaves

6 weeks later

NOTE

These were my trials and errors, by no means my methods were correct but if you feel you can give a better guide, please comment. I am no Farmer but an Engineer who is trying to understand Urban Farming Engineering.

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