Ikea Tabletop ÅKERBÄR Greenhouses

He can eat it, right? He's bigger than how I think. Should be able to eat the banana with the peel still partially on. Everything seems okay. Hey, what's up gardening friends? Jeff here. How's everybody doing? Hope you're doing well. I'm great. Very hot. We're in a bit of a not bit an extreme heat spell. So, I have a pause going on with the yard work just to be safe. Pretty much just watering right now. I figure that would be a boring thing to make a video about. I need to spray these pots. Maybe we'll do that. The reason I picked up the camera was because yesterday myself and bae were over at the Big Blue Monster. I don't like going there. Not one of my favorite places in the world, but sometimes they have good deals. IKEA is what I'm referring to as the Big Blue Monster. And I picked up a few things. I think only two are really relevant to plants. Well, not really. Let's go get them. I got some green houses. They had two different sizes. I think they maybe had multiples, but I just picked out two of one that I would call a medium sized one and a big one. One was like 25, one was I should go get them and then we'll talk about them some more and just set them up. I don't think I'll be putting plants in them right now. That seems more like winter indoor energy, but I would like to get them set up. They're just in the boxes right now and they're in the back of the car and it's very hot. I just I want to get them out of the car and you know, we just hang out and set up some IKEA green houses and whoever else knows what might happen. People don't know where the recycling bin is, apparently. Oh my gosh, this heat. Zenyas are liking it. Can't say anything about the hydrangeanger. That guy's been dead. Just slowly working its way over to the yard waste can. All right, let's see. What do I have here? Oh, I got some more balls. These are great. Those are It's a long story. Forgot those were even in here. Uh so WG's uh BA lives in an old abandoned salon. Also a home up top. And there's just thousands of dollars worth of wigs that we've been going through trying to get organized uh so they can be sold. There we go. I don't know why. I've just been excited to just come outside and sit under the shade all morning even though it's absolutely disgusting out here. Pretty gross. Why aren't you in the pool? What are you doing? Why are you dry? Go swim. Yeah, she's waiting for permission. That's not usual. I'm not going with you. Sorry, Turbs. Go on. Go swim. do your thing. Good boy. There he goes. Now, here's what I've picked up. Also, if there ends up being noise from the fan, apologies in advance, but there's just no way that the camera is going to work without the fan running. Not for very long. Anyways, here's the two different green houses. And then I have just some different trays. They're just trays. That's a three of each kind to help care around plants and materials and things like that. I always save the cardboards from the nurseries, but these just seem more practical. I think that this is a boot tray, right? Like the thing you're supposed to like stomp your feet in it or something. Maybe a mat goes down on top of it. Not quite sure, but this is going to be very nifty. I'm going be very glad to have these things fairly soon. The bowls are just bowls. I have a nephew who's 14 months old and all the various pets. I just think that for the price, buck.99 for a six-pack, pretty good for food preps and thin the little guy, all those things. So this is the that word aerbar acrebar acrebearer I don't know try I'm not really sure bay is Swedish I could have asked but oh well designed by Willie Chong this one is 17 in and 34 in this way and then this one over here is 25 12 this one I'm really excited about this one I liked more for the color you'll see in just a moment one of them was I believe $24.99 and the other one I think was $39.99 or $44.99. I might be off with either one of those by like 5 to 10 bucks. It was IKEA. You know how it is. The plant section IKEA is like right towards the very end. And at that point, my brain ain't working anymore. I've been trapped in the IKEA coma parallel universe that you go into when you're in that place where there's, you know, no windows or anything and time is just an illusion and there's too many things everywhere and you can't figure out the shortcuts and there's no way to get your card upstairs unless you can find the elevator that's on the right side. But it was worth it cuz I was able to get these things. You having fun? It feels good in there, doesn't it? I believe you. I'll come in a little while. We can get in swim together. That's what I mean. I'll join you. Huh. Wonder what assembly is going to be like. It's IKEA, so you just you never know what you're going to get. Don't know. Call. I assume that's what's going on here. All right. Going to have some pains in here that have a film that need to be peeled off and then uh and then whatever step two is is going to happen. I think it just needs to keep peeling off film, right? Huh. So, this whole thing just slides together. It's pretty easy. Yeah, that appears to be the case. Everything's just going to slide together, which means this isn't going to be watertight. I assumed it wouldn't be watertight, but that would have been nice. But I would imagine that should be something that can remedy fairly easily. All right, so this must be the top piece because it's one piece, it looks like. Is that just one piece? Yeah. Okay. Be very careful with these. I feel like the glass that's in this is probably going to scratch up pretty dang easily. This looks like a side piece. Another side piece right there. And then bottom. And then the little front tray piece. Oh, and the back. The back's important. Oh, that is plexiglass. Why was I thinking it was glass? Of course, it's not glass. Not for 25 bucks and shipping and everything. Plexiglass is fine. Does scratch up pretty easily and sometimes it'll yellow in the sun. So, I suppose that's something to consider with where I end up putting this in the house, right? Set this over here like I'm looking at a puzzle. That makes more sense. I'm looking at the directions again, right? And these two envelopes have these parts right here, which are just pegs, and then these parts right here, which have little slots in them. You can't see that. There you go. I'll show them again, of course, as I'm getting through this. I already forgot what the instructions said. Oh, yeah. Peel the film off. I'm going to peel the film off of these. What's wrong with you? What's wrong? Go swim. You drill. You have a fresh bowl of water. You can go drink some water. He really wants me to get in that pool. Not happening. Not right now. Peeled off of the inside. No problem. Had to be careful around these guys, the little, you know, bendy frame holding things on this side. Uh, what do we do here? There's a there's a pain in the way. What am I How am I supposed to do this? I was thinking that I could just remove this, you know, peel the tabs back and pull the whole thing out, but the piece of plexi is long enough that it goes into these side bends or these uh grooves that are in here. And that I don't want to bend that open. Especially when it has that peg there. What am I missing? Oh, you just bend them out. This should pop out, right? It's going to come out a little. There we go. Here's some peeling action for you. Oh yeah. Love that. So satisfying having a good peel. These tab Gosh, that's so much leg. The shorts aren't that short, but when you sit down, they pull up. You know, it's just it is what it is. These tabs do feel like the kind of tab where if you, you know, move them up and down too many times, they're not going to last. So, that's something I thought I should point out to be careful with that. It's something that I'm thinking about because I was talking about how I might want this to be waterproof, which uh that would take some work. Watertight, not waterproof. I think that the interior would need to be sprayed down with like a Flex Seal or just anything that would help protect the metal. And then you just silicone the rest of it. That's not a big deal. That's pretty easy. So, that might be a summer activity cuz, you know, in the winter I'm not going to be doing I'm not spraying that stuff in my grow space or in my house. You have to wait for like a nice warm 60° day to get that done. All right. Is this one scratched up? I don't think so. Some of these panels were scratched up from the go. I peeled the stuff off and they had scratches underneath them. What the crap's that about? It's plexiglass. Plexiglass scratches easily. I have a kit that I can use to buff scratches out of acrylic that I've used on my fish tanks before. If it were bother me enough, I could do that, but it's not bothering me enough. But someday it may. It may be something that gets on my nerves. Come on. There we go. All right. Always fun filming through glass and flex. You can kind of see the fine heroine scratches on here. You see them? They kind of reflect through there a little bit. No, you can't really see it. That's probably more of a me thing than anything else. Spotty glass drives me crazy. I like things to be clear, except for the one spot on my door where I have said screw it because there will always be no sprints from the dog on it. I wipe it down about once a week. But that's as far as I'm going with that window. All right, refer back to the directions and get this thing slided together, slid together. Yeah. The first two pages, peel it apart. Second page. Little skinny panel into the two side panels. This is easy. It just slides together. There's a notch in here. Can you see it? Do you see the notch? Sort it right there. Just slides right together. The mic pointed right at the fan when I was saying that. Not a great idea. Sorry. I love when things just slide together. That's so nice. But so far, all I've had to do is just peel some film off of this stuff. makes the whole setup process much more enjoyable. All right, there we go. It's not done. I still need to put on all the pegs and put on top of the tray, but you get it right. And the deal with Oh, you can't even see it. The deal with these guys right here, ones that have the slots, the ones with the pegs, the ones with the slots, those go in first. And then the one with the peg that just goes right inside of it, pushes in. doesn't go in very easily, but it does go in. There we go. It expands and locks the lid in place, the top of the lid, whatever you want to call it. Now, this just sits on top of the earth. That's what the directions say. It just sits on it. I was kind of hoping that this would be more incorporated instead of just being a drainage basin, but well, I'm sure I can fix that. Yeah, it just sits in there. Had a big gap right here. So, if I were to want to make this into the type of terrarium that I prefer to have, then I would I'm going to lift this up. That's a whole lot of reflection. Oh, there's just more more reflection right there. I like my terrariums to not be airtight, but it's nice for them to at least have a basin so they're watertight. And I can see the advantage to having it this way where it just lifts off versus being watertight. But if I were to want to plant this up instead of just set potted plants in it, then I think it'd be a great idea to well, for one, like I mentioned, probably take the plexiglass out and spray the inside, at the very least the inside down with some sort of protectant. Let that dry. And then I would put in a heavier layer of silicone at the bottom and then in here in these gaps that run along the front and do a water test and see if it holds. You can see that gap is it's a decent size. There's some wiggle room here. This whole thing does move. It has some flex to it. But those are easy things to do. What do we think? I really like it. I know IKEA has sold I think basically this for a very very very long time. And uh in the past years ago, I don't go to IKEA that often. They only offered it in black. And I feel like it was a little bit smaller than this, but maybe not. But I saw this color and I thought, "Oh, I really like that color. I like it a lot. So, I got it. The big one, it only came in black. So, that's fine. I'm more excited about this one cuz I think I'm going be able to do a lot more with this one than this little tabletop terrarium, greenhouse, whatever, whatever we're going to call it. All right, I'm going to put this one together now. You already know how that goes. We just talked through it and we'll come back and put some side by side. Well, probably not. I don't have that much space for side by side, but you know what I mean. You get to see it. It's not the thing itself. It wasn't so hard to put together. It's these stupid little peg things kept popping out. I found one. This one that happened with two. There's four for each one. So, you have eight cuz you have the one you put in and then you have the peg. I've registered the fan down. Crank that down a couple of notches. Uh yeah, they have these pieces and uh they like to bounce out. So, I figured out when I got to the last two to just pre-insert them just just a smidge, not all the way and then do it because when you put the one peg in, as you're reaching for the other one, the other peg falls out with maybe the directions said something about that. I don't know. They say directions, you know what I mean? I've searched all over the place for the one missing peg. I can't find it. I found the others cuz they would hit the dirt. I just did a repotting, so there's dirt on the ground over here. So, I'm missing a peg right in this little spot right there. Yeah. I don't know. I'll keep my eyes peeled for it. went down right here and then it bounced. I thought this way. I picked up the chair and I moved it and I don't see anything. And then I combed through the soil. Didn't see it. I had boxes sitting here. I moved them before I picked the camera back up. So, it shouldn't be under the I We don't need to go on about that too long. Here's the big one. What do we think? Thank goodness. These trays are already paying off. I know it looks sloppy, but you get the point here. A small one and a big one. Or a medium one and a large one. however you like to think of it. Already mentioned it, by no means airtight or watertight, but these would be really great for plants that just want some more humidity. And they look I they look nice, too. I just like the way they look for years. And I mean by years, I mean since I was a child, pretty much my entire life, I've been trying to find one of those old classic wing cases. Do you know what I'm talking about? The really big ones. They're like three or four feet long and they have the finials and they're just oh, they're beautiful. It ain't happening. Whenever I do find them, they're many hundreds if not thousands of dollars. So, I feel like, well, this is this will do. It's not the same vibe, but it's it's within the territory. For me, I like this sort of a setup for getting cutings going or for some of my plants that are just more particular about their humidity, but stay smaller. So, um like my uh pacio pedulum orchids, lady slipper orchids, they don't like the air in my house. They never have. But I have one under a cloch right now and it's thriving. It's even it has a flower bud on it. So, you know, this is for those types of purposes. I would really like to at least with one of these seal it up and, you know, just try and make it not so bioactive because everything's going to come crawling out the sides. I could seal it up though. There are some gaps in the sides. It could get sealed up and actually just plant it up. I think that would be beautiful. Maybe with this larger one, put like a tiny little water feature in it and just lots and lots and lots of plants that stay very small. Lots of crawlers, you know, ground cover type things. And then this one I'm going to be using use be utilizing more for actually just setting potted plants inside of it cuz I think it looks cute or because they seem to be struggling with the conditions in the home or probably propagations help hold the humidity in for things I'm trying to root. This one right here, the regular one. I say regular because I'm pretty sure it's the one that they've sold for like ever. I don't know how long they've been selling this one, but this is my first time seeing, but again, I don't go to the IKEA very often, but that I was like, it's not big enough. And then today, I was like, well, I'll just buy two cuz why not? That one came in black, white, and this blue color. This one, they only had it in black at the store. I don't know what the options are online. Maybe they're much better. I have no idea. However, since you do have to remove the plexiglass panes to pull the film off, you can paint these so so so easily. You could spray paint this within an hour. You could easily have, you know, get one coat on, let it dry, flip it over, get the other coat on. So, you could make these whatever color you wanted for only a few bucks in a small amount of time. And I don't think it would necessarily be a bad idea to go over either one of these with a clear coat. might be something that I consider on the outside because I'm already noticing some water spots on this guy over here. So, that might just help protect it some. These weren't very expensive. Not to say that they're poor quality. Just saying that sometimes things from places like IKEA and whatnot, things aren't always built to last a long time. Uh, so that might be something to consider. These don't feel like I know this one for sure. that one. The paint does have a different feel to it, but it's not quite to point where I would say it's like powder coated, which would make it more durable. I don't think I'd go that far. There are things you could do. Or don't do any of those things. Probably unnecessary, and I'm just totally overthinking all of this and just disregard it. I think they look nice. Uh the tray situation, I'm sure there's way you could secure them together. There is a hole on the bottom on one side over here and one side over here where maybe you can put a screw in and that would fasten those things together. Yeah, it's the fun thing about these things from IKEA. There's lots of stuff you can do with them if you wanted a better representation of the size difference. And here you go. Yeah, that's the size difference. This one, it's only a few inches, but that does make a difference. Got a lot more stuff in this one. Just larger plants that are more full and more bushy. So, some of my plants I don't really need to keep my Phelinopsis orchids. Those are just your common orchids. You know what I'm talking about? Sometimes called the moth orchids that you see all over the place. Those they can get pretty wide. So, this might be a good option for that. Particularly this larger one. You could do that in this one, too. You just got to keep it the right direction. Probably enough room to do the blind spike in that one, though. This one I like because I'm like, "Oh, this one has potential for just a lot more." But, you know, of course, that comes at a cost, which is that it takes up space. I think it would be pretty cool if IKEA would sell a tray that fits in each one of these, just a clear tray that you can set down inside of it. That's you just It only has to be this deep. Doesn't have to be very deep and whatever depth that would be. So you can plant it up and not have to go through the trouble of sealing everything and whatnot. Because I think that it would be fun with the cost of these to especially this one to be able to do a whole bunch of different ones where you actually plant them up. I think a little desert scape would look really cool inside of there and even going through and foaming the back perhaps on this larger one and making it, you know, just look like a nice piece of art. But you would need a tray or some sort of reservoir that holds that water in really well or do what I was talking about to be more complicated, which is just going through and protecting the inside and then sealing it up. But I bet I think trying to find a tray that fits inside of there, a clear tray, that's probably the better way to go. Might be hard to find something in those exact dimensions. Might require some cutting, but uh yeah, that might be the way to do it. And if it's just a smidge smaller, then I would pack the front with moss. You wouldn't actually see that there's a tray behind it that's holding everything. Yeah. H the wheels are spinning. Now I'm getting excited to actually do something with these. But again, that's indoor growing energy and we're still that time of year trying to get the stuff done outside. Except for right now, it's too hot. I'm not doing anything out here. Want to get them put together though because I do have some house plants and things in my garden window inside that I think would look nice inside of these and I can just set them in there and see how they do for a while and we'll talk about them some more when it's time to plant them up and talk about how the plants have done that were just sitting inside of them. I will probably end up buying some sheets of PE pixie plexiglass and just making my own tray that goes on the inside. You wouldn't really even be able to see it. You still see right through. And again, you just pack it with gravel or moss, whatever you want. So, you can't look into the soil. I don't like to look into the soil on these clear things. So, that's up to you, but it would be pretty easy to do, right? You just you buy the plexiglass and then there's a chemical. I cannot remember what it's called. I've done this cuz I've built acrylic aquariums before, so why can't I? It's been a long time, but it's just it's in a little bottle and you just put it along the seam. It fuses everything together. It's pretty easy to do. All right, I need to get back to looking for that missing piece that popped out of the back of this one right here and uh get these inside and get away from this heat. It's too hot. It's supposed to be I think like 74 in seven or eight days sometime next week. Oh. Oh, I cannot wait. This video won't be out for a minute, so it'll probably will have cooled off longer. It's early to mid August right now. I don't know if this video will even be out in August. I think it will, but I'm not sure. All right, here it is. I wanted to give it a few weeks. I have some cups and things sitting out here for my nephew. A lot of clutter on the counter right now. Uh, a few weeks. Really, several weeks. Sorry, banging stuff around. Just so I could report back with how I like it. And I love it. This is the blue one. I took the black one. I set it in the garage. That's me more for winter projects. And this one right here, the plants are just loving life. I need to clean the plexiglass. That got dirty relatively quickly. It's only been about 3 weeks or a month. Everything that's in there has been really happy. These African violets were on the struggle bus. Their foliage, you can see the older foliage. This wasn't looking great, but within I'd say 2 weeks of having them in here, I'm getting nice stiff new growth on them. This one was flowering and then I put that filidendrron in there and it started shading it. So, I need to do some rearranging. But it's nice. I think they look good. I went down a rabbit hole of these little greenhouse things. I ordered some from Michaels cuz they were like 15 bucks or something. Um, but it's not going to work for plants because there's no glass in the top. That was hard to tell from the pictures. I mean, I could put a plant in there and just let it grow with an open top. That might look nice. But, um, well, can't really call that a terrarium, can we? It's an interesting pot, but not a terrarium. Turbo's really having a nice big drink over there. Okay. Hey, this was fun. I'm looking forward to getting these set up and doing other things with them, particularly in the winter time, getting to craft the larger one. Comment down below. What are some of your experiences? I know these IKEA green houses are very very popular and there are a lot of ways to modify them. I think even on Etsy people sell things been like printed out with 3D printers and custom put put custom cut peg boards you can put in the back to hang your plants up. There's all kinds of fun stuff you can do. I know with me I would like to just seal it up so that I have a solid basin or I could even find something that just fits in there and set it down in there so I can grow the plants directly in it. I think that would be fun. Lots of options. Let me know some of the fun things you've done or would like to do. All right, as always and most importantly everybody, keep on growing. Bye bye. [Music]