How to Make a Terrarium

g'day welcome to like cultivate my name's Steve having just moved into a new house we're now looking at ways in which we can turn that house into a home and the addition of indoor plants is one way in which we're going to do that today we're going to be looking at how you can make your own terrarium so in order to make our area we're going to need a number of products the first is of course plants now the plants that you're going to select for your terrarium are going to be indoor plants the terrarium is going to be indoors and so therefore indoor plants are what you're looking for now ideally I guess that will often mean some type of fern but of course it's not limited to just ferns but I have a couple of different species of ferns here in addition to that you are going to need some activated charcoal some white pebbles although they don't need to be white but I'm not going with white and some Spagna moss lastly of course the plants have got to grow in a medium and that medium is going to be a potting mix now this bowl is something that I picked up from a local secondhand shop for just a couple of dollars so you might like to have a look at some bargain shops in order to get something it doesn't have to be expensive but we start this process by adding some pebbles to the bottom of the container now you really only need a couple of centimeters of pebbles in the bottom and their purpose is to provide some drainage away from the soil what we don't want because remember this container does not have drainage holes in the bottom of it what we don't want is for our plants to be sitting in their potting mix soaked in water that water needs to be able to drain away and it is these pebbles that provide the place for the water to drain away the second thing that we need to add is a bit of activated charcoal because a terrarium is a reasonably closed environment and it's going to be inside there is that potential for such things as fungal and bacterial growth not to mention of course a few odors it is this activated charcoal that minimizes the growth of those sorts of things and keeps odors to a minimum if present at all again you just need to have a couple of centimetres of this charcoal the next thing is to add a layer of our potting mix just burn that down a little bit and now on top of that what we can add is our plants now I'm going to fill in around our plants with our potting mix and firm that down you will of course just have to manipulate a few leaves around while you're adding this now I'm just going to give it a very light water I don't want to put too much water in here and ideally I'll probably never use a container to water it with again it'll mainly be a spray bottle now having watered I'm going to put a thin layer of spagna moss across the top this will help with moisture retention it also makes it look quite nice as well and there we have a new terrarium now it's easy to monitor how much water is actually in the terrarium by just simply looking at the condition of the soil and whether there is any water lying in amongst the pebbles down below don't water it too much remember in fact most of the time you'll be able to just give it a spray with a spray bottle but if you do feel it's getting a little bit too dry well then sure give it a little bit of water but remember be careful about how much lastly you probably want to about once a month perhaps give it a bit of a spray with some seaweed emulsion now hope you've enjoyed this video can I ask you please to go down to the thumbs up give us a thumbs up subscribe to this channel and go to our website I cultivate dotnet and become a member of the community it's there that you can continue the gardening conversation thanks for watching [Music]