Build an indoor Windowfarm this winter!

If you're mourning the seasonal loss of your backyard garden productivity, here's a viable alternative: The Windowfarms Project has just released two new indoor garden kits that make home-grown vegetables an option through the winter. Their hydroponic systems use sunlight shining through your window and repurposed 1.5-liter bottles to grow food indoors. The concept, by Britta Reilly, originated as a social design project, but soon over 15,000 people joined the ranks and elevated The Windowfarms Project to a popular enterprise and community. The system is quite simple, using the bottles as drip-hydroponic modules to grow almost any fruit or vegetable with a little sunlight, organic nutrient solution, and of course, water. If you don't have enough sunlight, you can supplement the system with full-spectrum CFL lightbulbs. has brought together over 15,000 citizen scientists interested in designing for a better good. Around this time of year, I start to miss the smell of tomato vines, so perhaps I've found myself a holiday project!