Transcript:
Hi, my name is Christine. Welcome to botanical woman today. I will be making a hanging, succulent ball That was inspired by this bird feeder that we got from our neighbor. And if you’re going to hang up something in your balcony, you might as well decorate it with some plants, so let’s go make our ball. I was able to get all my materials locally from the dollar store, grocery store and hardware store. This is what I’ll be using cocoa liner trowel, scissors, glue, gun metal plant hanger. Spagna Moss Peat Moss acts on organic potting Mix. Succulents noodle. Cats, mix, screwdriver, fake knife, pruning shears, chopstick twine, cut this noodle into smaller pieces so that we can use it as a center of our spear. Because what we don’t want to do is fill the entire sphere with Deric. Because it’s gonna get really heavy. Once we soak it, you can use other foam items like packing peanuts. If you have those lying around or styrofoam. I came in. You know, whenever you ordered through the mail, so those would be good fillers as well next. We’re going to create the planting medium that we’re gonna put inside the sphere where the succulents will get its nutrients and water, so the face is going to be this cactus mix, which is very coarse as a lot of bark and Prairie lights in it, which really allows the water to leave the roots very quickly and so quickly we’re gonna add some moss to help create the water tension so peat moss and smack and wasp book do the same. I’m gonna add a little bit above Just because I think this bag new loss will give it a little bit more air to breathe so less dense of a medium and then to kind of counter that we’re gonna put in some potting mix because like. I said this medium dries out so quickly. I really don’t want a water the sphere more than once a week, and because it’s gonna be hanging outside, it’s gonna be exposed to more elements like the winds and more Sun so really needed to retain its moisture after filling in the planters, I water them and allow them to drink overnight. Now that the medium has settled. I will add more soil to top it off. Now that we’ve topped off our two planters, we can go ahead and make our ball. What we’re going to do is take one and put it on top of the other to prevent all the so soil from falling out. I got a piece of cardboard recycling. I’m just gonna put it on top. Hold it firmly! Pick it up and flip it over here. We go folks line up your halves. We’re gonna slowly tried to pull out the cardboard with that. Everything we did about what? I’m doing now is just using twine and tying two planters together. Okay, using the twine, just like thread, double knotting it and cutting it. I’m being overly cautious by tying many knots all over the place. Because I don’t trust my my double knot solution. It was okay heavy now that we have our cycling ball together. I chose these Hardy succulents for this project because they will survive a Seattle winter. I chose four different types of succulents to give texture to our ball, clunkers, lumbers, hangers and Creepers. Next we’re going to get the succulents to our ball, but before we can do that, we have to remove it obviously out of the nursery pots, but also remove as much dirt as possible, preserving its root system and then what we should be able to do is pull out each individual rosettes with some roots attached to it. I just put down some newspaper because messing up my table surface, but also for easy cleanup. All right, so one way I liked. It is just give it a squeeze. Loosen up the root system or the soil, and usually when you do that, it comes right out. I’m Elora. Look at this . I’m gonna try to rip the babies off the chicks. Now that we removed all the dirt from the succulents. We can insert them into the bottle. The way we’re going to do, this is. I’m going to distribute the color and the size of the succulents around the ball on top, though we mainly the plumpers and the lumbers and at the bottom. We’re gonna have the hangers and the creepers to attach the succulent. We’re going to do first is poke a hole in the center where I want the succulents to be placed with the screwdriver and then I’m going to cut a slit across horizontally because then it could be a little pocket for your succulent to sit in, and then depending on the size of the root of your succulent, I can help determine how big the hole should be. So this one here doesn’t have much roots so all. I’m going to do is try to get it and gently We’re going to use a tool and a chopsticks and oh, please keep the opening open and slowly insert it into the sphere. Apollo should have trimmed the stem a little bit more so that it can. I can push it into the ball more easily because it was quite long. So now it’s not exactly sitting flush on the ball, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but just in case. I’m going to add a little bit of hot glue at the bottom to secure it in place. stab the ball to death! This project is definitely harder than I thought it would be. I’m happy with the result. I’m not sure how well the plants will adjust to their new environment. In hindsight, I would choose a smaller sphere, The challenge of using something so big is that you need so many succulents to cover the surface, and as you saw, we use quite a few pots of plants and we still haven’t covered all the areas you can still see the cocoa liner, and I’m hoping that you know with time. It will just grow in some of the challenges. I met while doing this was one cutting the cocoa liner. The : liner is actually a lot tougher. Um, then. I thought my scissors were quite dull. I used scissors, shears, A steak knife to try to cut it open. So make sure you’re gonna do. This project have sharp scissors. The official hens and chicks were good picks for this project. Their roots are shallow. They were very easy to separate, so those were great, but these guys that look like balls. The only problem is, they are top-heavy so some of them. I had to use twine to kind of create an additional support to have them. Stay back onto the ball, so those were. I would say not as great and then these other ones that were purely red. They had very lumpy roots, so the roots were more chunky and so getting them in to the liner was what made it more challenging because if the bottom was like a big bulge and cutting them made it challenging. So I probably killed a couple by doing that. Bottom half was much more challenging because I was working with these really delicate stone crops and the hangers and the creepers and dividing up these little plants to such small strands. It also made me worried their survival rate. I just don’t think that they’re gonna make it. Thank you for watching. If this video inspired you to make your own succulent ball, please share with us. I would love to hear from you until next time. This is Botanical Woman .