Transcript:
Hey, guys, how’s it going today? I want to give you an update on this terrarium that I put together almost three years ago. Now it was right after Benjamin was born and it has performed so phenomenally well. I mean, look at these plants. They are absolutely beautiful and I was trying out a new method of planting that I’m going to be putting together another terrarium today to show you kind of the same method that I used in this one, Because if we can have plants and terrariums, that are like non-draining containers, especially succulents and have them perform like this. I think it’s something worth talking about every once in a while. So the thing I did differently in this terrarium as I was trying out Something called Hydra stones as one of my layers in the bottom. This is what they are right here. They’re made of recycled glass. They’re like pumice That’s what they feel like and what they do. The surface of these things are full of irregular sized holes and they which allows them to soak in oxygen and release it as the plants Need it. So you know when I tried it out here. I said in that video like this is an experiment. I don’t know how these plants are going to do, but you can clearly see that the plants are happy. The only thing I’ve had to do with this terrarium is I’ve had to trim the crassula a few times because it’ll want to, you know, this isn’t a super tall dome. It’ll want to like, start growing and like curling against the side, so I’ll just trim off little pieces and stick them back down in the soil, and they root and take off, and this thing has just it’s just so pretty I’m so proud of it, so what, you usually see in terrariums like this, especially glass ones where you can see all the layers you might see like a layer of charcoal and then maybe several different layers of different colored stone and then moss and soil, maybe more moss, after that, it’s a really aesthetically pleasing look, but putting a layer of gravel at the bottom of any container is really not that great for your plants, At least in my experience. I should say I think if you’re watering like, really diligent about watering properly. You can still get away with it, but I think in most cases, what happens is when you water your plant, so you’ve got a container here and you’ve got a layer of soil and a layer of gravel. You water your plant. The water makes it down to the bottom layer of that soil and that bottom layer acts as a sponge, it will soak up and retain as much water as it possibly can before it will start dripping down into that gravel. So what you’ve done essentially, instead of having that saturated layer down lower, You’ve moved it up closer to the root zone of your plants, which can make them rot a little bit faster, but again, you know, if you’re really sparing about the amount of water that you give, and you’re really on it. Um, in terms of you know, being observant of that. I think you could still get away with it. I have done it in the past with some amount of success, but I feel like if we can do it in a way where these look like stone, but they act a little bit different and treat our plants a little bit better in the end while we don’t have to be as diligent with the watering. I think it’s a good thing, so what I want to do? Today is put together another terrarium in the same exact way. The only difference here is that this terrarium isn’t see-through, so we won’t be able to see the layers, But I’ll put it together Exactly the same as this other one isn’t this cute. I think this time of year like it got down close to 15 degrees last night and so like my attention just automatically comes inside, and you know, we want to do a little bit more projects to kind of freshen up the inside of our house, but it’s still like a non-draining container. So I’ve got my Hydra stones here. I’ve got cactus mix soil. I’m still going to use that because I’ve got succulents here. I’ve got an echeveria peacock eye. That’s so beautiful! I need to clean it up a little bit. I’ve got a haworthia right here. These are so wonderful and low maintenance. And then this one is a sedum called Tokyo Sun. I thought these three were really cute together, so it doesn’t really take that many plants for a terrarium like this. I also have a little piece of Moss that I might break up and kind of tuck in. And then I’ve got my Ziploc baggie full of rocks. I reuse rocks from, uh, project to project. I just clean them in a bleach water solution. And so I’ve got these to top dress my soil. The only thing I’m missing is a little bit of like sheet Moss. Let me go grab it, okay. This is actually sphagnum moss. Usually i’ll use like a more colorful sheet. Moss, that’s green. If I’m going to be able to see it, but in this case, we won’t be able to see it, So let’s just walk through the steps First off, we’re going to put a layer of Hydra stones at the bottom. Get these cleaned up. I’ll tip it. So you guys can see kind of what that looks like right there. This is actually nice because this reservoir is a lot taller than this reservoir. That one’s really skinny. And then if I was going to be doing this in a container like this one where I don’t want my soil to go down and like mess up the appearance of my stones, I would put a little layer of moss, so I’ll go ahead and do that now. With the sphagnum moss, that’ll just provide us a nice barrier, all right, and then our soil and a little bit of this stuff goes a long way, so like if you were to buy a bag of Moss and Hydra stones and and cactus mix, you could really put together quite a number of terrariums with it, okay, so we’re essentially ready to plant at this point. So what I’m going to do is take my echeveria out of its pots pretty dry. I skipped watering these today. I’m going to remove a lot of its soil. Do that over its nursery can here probably would have been easier if I would have loosened up the soil with a little water. That’s okay in terrarium situations. Succulents are so nice because you could. Really, you could just cut this whole thing off and just stick it in and let it root again if you wanted to. But they’re not very deep rooted plants, so they’re easy to plant. I’m going to groom off These lower leaves that are dried up. Looks like I need to do Some baby removal, too. Look at this, see that there. I’m just going to take that off. Just pop off all the little babies here. We can just put those down in soil like, look at the bottom of this one already has roots see those it’s amazing. Okay, So once I have this echeveria cleaned up. You can see how long the neck of this thing is. Which, in this case, let me see. I think that’s okay. You could go in and you could with your pruners and you could prune this off and make it shorter and stick it down in the soil. You just want to make sure to wait to water. You’d want to make sure to wait to water your planter tall. That the end had a chance to callous over, usually like five to seven days, but in this case, I kind of, like a little bit of height that stem gives it because this is going to be our tallest plant in here, you always have to make sure to leave room to accommodate for the top. That’s kind of the hard part and you pack soil in around those roots. Isn’t that the most gorgeous echeveria? Oh, I just love the balance kind of like. I think one of the reasons why I love dahlias so much. It’s like kind of dahlia shaped, okay. How are you next same process for this one? Put that on this side. Maybe I think you could just do one plant in here. Too, and just do like a little sand and rocks. Keep it really simple. It’d be pretty and our sedum. Now I’m going to go in with a little bit of stones, so I’ve got some different sizes in here. I think I’m going to tuck. Maybe a larger one in here, and then maybe some smaller. I don’t know, I mean, maybe a little bit of Moss. This is kind of a fun part. You can just trial an error. Just pop stuff in there. See if you like the way it looks. If I turn this around, you can see a little bit of moss in there, and then maybe some of these smaller stones just to cover up the rest of that soil. These are actually just aquarium stones. You can find some really cool colors and the right size too. I find in aquarium stones, okay. This is going to be interesting, putting the lid back on it because that looks pretty just like that, and you can use the same kind of, um, setup. If you’re just putting something in a bowl that doesn’t drain, it doesn’t have to have a terrarium top to it, so let’s try. This out may have to do a wee bit of adjustment so far so good there. The thing I like about this terrarium is that you can water without taking the whole lid off of it. So you’ve got your little thing on the top. You can take your lid off. I use. I know this is a little bit of an overreaction, But we are up in my plant room. I like to use something like this or a large syringe, which I also have that up here. Something like this right here where you can draw up the amount of water you need. You can stick it right down in that hole, and you can water right at the root zone of the plant, so this is pretty much the same concept where I just put this down in and I can water keeping the water off the leaves of the plant and I can water just exactly how much I I need to instead of accidentally, you know, like what the watering can It’s easy to accidentally Let the weight of it kind of get away from you, and you accidentally Slosh too much in that sort of thing. So that is it, you guys and I know. I did an update last year of this exact same container, so we’ll link that down below as well and I just had wanted to show you how the Hydra stones were working, and now that we have so much time under our belts with the same container. I’ve just been so excited with how it’s performed. I wanted to start making some more and I feel like when you know what to do. In terms of layering and how it works, it opens up the realm of possibilities of containers. I mean, they don’t have to be a terrarium. It can be any kind of container. I mean, it can be a mason jar. It can be whatever I just think it’s so fun to kind of look at all the different vessels out there with a different eye, knowing you can get away with planting things even without a drain hole. If you kind of know where how to go about it and I do recommend if you are a beginner. Start with containers that do have drain holes, just so you can get a little time and experience under your belts. Learning how to read your plants. You’ll get to a point where you can see a plant and you can know like that. Plant needs more water, or maybe I’m giving that plant too much and you can learn when you need to start rectifying those sorts of situations that way when you start planting in things that don’t have drain holes, you will be able to read your plant right away when it’s showing any kinds of stress, and that will help you have so much more success, and you know, it’s just been so hit and miss for me in the past. When I didn’t use Hydra stones and I was using gravel And then I tried without it was just a little bit. I had to be more diligent about it. And now with the Hydra stones, I feel like I haven’t had to really even watch this container. It gets water, Maybe once a month, and that’s it. I do have it in this room. It’s either under grow lights, or it’s by a really bright window. So knowing your plant’s light requirements is also really important. This one, though, however, is never in full direct sun like from outside, uh, because the glass can intensify that light and can burn the leaves of your plants, so be aware of that also. This video is not sponsored by hydrostone’s. I don’t even know what company makes it. Do you even know what that bag said? I don’t know. I just picked it up down at the garden center. I think you could just Google Hydra stones. Anyway, that’s it, you guys. I hope you enjoyed seeing that. Update and seeing another one. Come together. I’m sure we will be doing some more indoor plant arrangements as the season progresses, and it gets even colder and more bleak outside brings some life inside with some green plants so anyway. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it and we will see you in the next one bye.