Got a window? Then you can grow your own food.

A group of driven, DIY-types from around the world are helping to bring hydroponic systems home. In her TED talk “A Garden in My Apartment” (below), Britta Riley of Windowfarms — vertical food gardens, if you will — shows how a socially-driven community of 24,000 hydroponics buffs have refined the concept into a showroom-ready product. (Don’t worry, you can still build your own.)

It used to be that the closest that apartment dwellers (like myself) get to fresh fruits and vegetables is the local farmer’s market. Practically and efficiently growing own tasty, nutritious food was a fantasy — one that best left to our rural friends or neighbors with a patch of land to fulfill. Not anymore.

Thanks to Windowfarm’s active community and open-source philosophy, anyone can enjoy the benefits inherent in crowdsourcing R&D. Among them, according to Riley, is a setup that encourages global collaboration, which in turn results in rapid prototyping. Judging by Waterfarm’s well-funded Kickstarter page, the project is well on its way to becoming a movement that spreads well beyond its maker roots.

In fact, I can almost taste it. Learn more about Waterfarms here.

Image credit: Windowfarms