Green Little Secret: plant in a bottle that carries special meaning too! (no need for green fingers)

1. Green Little Secret - A plant in a bottle that carries special meaning: A green little secret is a plant in a bottle. It sounds very simple. It actually also is, though the plant has a special meaning, and the bottle is recycled. My name is Marjet Wullink. I'm born and raised on a farm, and now I'm a city girl. My idea is that I want to bring the nature back into my life by bringing these green plants into my house. I actually was never really good with plants. They always died on me, and I think it's because I didn't love them enough. A few years ago, I went to India, and I saw a plant that was on top of a bottle, and I really loved it. I started looking at blogs, and I saw some terrariums. Then I got the idea to put a plant into a bottle because it also dies on you less because the water recycles itself into the bottle and goes back down. You don't have to give it so much water as usual. If you want to bring green into your house and start recycling bottles, this class is perfect for you. 2. The materials you need to make a Green little secret: The most important materials you need to make the green little secrets are displayed on this table. The first thing you need is a bottle. This is just an ordinary juice bottle that I cleaned with a metal sponge. A sponge like this one. So that's quite easy, but you can also use another bottle, more crazy. This is an old whiskey bottle and it has a very small opening, so that's a little challenge. Then here, this used to be a candle holder and it also has a little bit smaller opening, but it's also fillable with a plant, so we are going to do this also today. Then the next thing you need is of course soil and a plant. So you can just use normal fertilized soil. A farm needs a little bit more wood inside, so you can add a little bit more wood into the soil if you want, and for Hedera, it doesn't really matter. So the plant, this is the fern, and this is a little bit smaller fern than normal because it can survive very well in a tellurium, because putting a plant into bottle is a little bit like a tellurium. Tellurium is most of the times more closed and this one has an opening, so it lets out more condensed water and this one is the Hedera, and the soil of the Hedera doesn't really matter. It goes good with everything. So that's not a complicated plant. Next what you need is a long brush. I will explain later why you need a long brush for, and chopsticks. So these two, not for eating but for putting the plant inside, and if you really want to, you can also buy very long scissors to do the maintenance, or it's also sometimes useful to use a tong like this one, and on the end, you want to put a label on your plant. You can design your own label with the meaning of the plant. Here I use for the Hedera, this one, and for the fern, I use this one. I ordered a stamp to make these labels, but you can also design it yourself. Then I have a string and this string are a threat. You can buy it just in a cooking shop because it's used for putting meat together, so it's very easy to buy or you can use another string that you like. So this is everything you need to make green little secret. So for the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to make a green little secret. 3. Fern in juice bottle: This lesson will be about how to make a Green Little Secret. How can you put the plant into the bottle? We first start to have the soil and the plant available close by. Then you take the soil and you put it into the bottle. You tilt the bottle a little bit, and the soil will also fall down. You do it like this until at least you've two fingers of soil on the bottom of the bottle. Then you start to clean already the top of the bottle so the neck. If the little plant goes through, now we're going to use the fan that it will not stick onto the leaves because it's not so beautiful if the leaves are already dirty and it's hard to get the soil or the sand off the leaves. If you first clean the bottle a little bit, this will prevent you for having a dirty plant in a bottle because that would not be so nice. Then we take the fern and you have to take care of this plant because it's a little bit fragile so you have to do it with your fingers and some love, actually. After you got it out of its container, you try to divide it in two pieces. It depends also how big your fern is, but this one can be divided in two or three pieces to fit into the bottle. You have to do it with feeling actually so you can also do it with your eyes closed. Because you should not break the roots, this is very important. If you break the roots, the plant might go dying after you put it in the bottle. After one week, you can see that the leaves are a little bit brown. Now, you hear also little bit cracking of the roots, but it should be that it's only cracking a little bit so you have to do it really with care. Yes. Well, this is a smaller piece than normal. You can also have a bigger piece, but it actually divides itself naturally so do it with love, then it will be fine. Then you look. If it's all still good, maybe, you have to take a little bit off. Maybe there's one that looks a little bit yellow so that one you could take it already out because it might not survive and then it gets brown. I also cut out a green one so that's a pity. I'm going to start to make this and smaller so it can fit into the bottle. Try not to break the roots, again, but only take out the soil. I'm going to divide the soil and the root. Then, I think, now it fits into the bottle so I take my bottle and I tilt the bottle so the soil is in an angle. After it's put like this, you keep it like that and you put in the plant. Then, if it's here, you take your chopstick and you do very gently, push the plant down and then you keep it tilted. You put the plant on the side where there's not so much soil and you push it a little bit with love and care down. Then you divide the soil around the plant and that's where it stays. But to make the plant a little bit more beautiful, you have to take the soil that was tilted in the angle off the glass. Everywhere you see the plant, you can divide the soil also better into the bottle so it's all in one line. After you have the plant, you can put around the bottle the label or the tag. You take the string and you have designed your own nice label with meaning. The meaning of the fern is happiness and riches. When you put this nice plant into your bedroom or your bathroom, it will give you happiness and riches, of course. That's what is especially made for, to give your room some nice positive karma. There it is, your own Green Little Secret. 4. A hedera in a big tall bottle : The next bottle we're going to fill with the Hedera is this bottle. We're going to fill this bottle with at least two fingers of soil. Because it's a high bottle, you can also put a little bit more soil so it fits better. We're going to get the other Hedera that I already had. I take it out, I tilt again the bottle and I shake it a little bit. Then you're going to put the Hedera into the bottle with care. Make sure that leaves don't break. Before you throw it in, it's very important that you have it on the right spot. So the soils should stay like this, but the plant should be there. Because you cannot reach there so easily, it is a little bit of a challenge. Let's try. Because my scissors are longer than my chopsticks, I always do this one with a scissor. Then you make sure the last bit you have to do with some shaking, very easy. Shake it until it goes on its right place. So now I think it's good. Then you can still clean the bottle again with your long brush until it's nice and clean. 5. Hedera in a whiskey bottle: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to put a green little secret into this bottle. This is a little bit of a challenge because the opening is much smaller. For the fern is almost impossible because the roots are too thick, but the Hedera can go through a smaller opening. First, I'm going to take out the Hedera from its container. You have to do this with care because most of the times the roots are intertwined on the bottom, so you put push them a little bit through and I can again use my chop sticks to do it with care and love, that was not so much care and love, but it landed on its feet. Then you can choose one because you actually can see that it is divided in different plants. If I open them a little bit, you see that this one, it's quite a big one. I take two out actually, one is little bit bigger than the other one and for this bottle, it's nicer to have a smaller one, so I choose for this one. Also here, we have to take two fingers of soil on the bottom and this is a little bit more complicated to put it in. It's actually already a little bit too much, so you check two fingers. I think it's a little bit too much for the height of the bottle and also the Hedera doesn't need so much soil, but this seems to be good enough. I first clean again the bottle and this is very hard to do it with the tool so you have to do it with your hands. It depends on the bottle, how you can clean it and sometimes you can do it also afterwards with some water, but a lot of water in a bottle is not good for the plants, so that you should be done with drops and it takes a lot of weeks. I clean it again. This can take some time. Then I get again, my Hedera with it and you see that the roots are much smaller than the fern, so this one can go through, do it again with care so you don't break the roots. Now, once it's like this in the neck, you again, start to tilt the bottle so the soil is in an angle and then you start to push the Hedera through the neck, because if you would now do it with your fingers, you would hurt it, so you again, have to do it with a chopstick or feel how you have to do it, not to hurt it too much because it should fit through, yes, and then you push it a little bit and you keep it in its place against the soil and then you let the soil go to the other side, so it all fits. Here, you see the Hedera inside the bottle. In the end, it will grow out of the bottle, most of times it first circle's a little bit around and then it will start to grow out. You then have to take care a little bit more so it doesn't get all green inside, but it can still survive, so you can put it on the top of your shelf and it will grow out. Now, we're going to add the tag or the label to the bottle. The label says, for the Hedera, "Forever love and friendship." 6. How to maintain a Green little secret: For healthy plants, it is important that you keep the soil dark. So if you see here this green little secret, you see that the soil is quite dark and you also see that it is a little bit of moisty. That's okay. It should not be too moisty it's actually better to have it a little bit dry then too moisty so if you really see water here, it's not good. Then you have to just pray that it doesn't die. To keep control over the health of your plants, it's important to keep the soil the right quality. So to see this every day, it's important that you keep your plant in a spot where you see your plant a lot. So it's on your eye height because if you put them somewhere in a little corner where you don't see them every day it could be that you forget them and then they will die sooner. For the fern, it is important that you don't put it in the full sunlight. It will burn and it will become yellow and brown and dies. The hedera is a little bit more practical because it doesn't burn off sunlight. But it, if you put it in a bottle like this, and the opening is very small and you would put it in the sun it's going to be condensing, so there will only be drops of water and you will not see the plant anymore. So for your green little secret it's important that it's not put in direct sunlight, but still in a room where there is some light. If you have a green little secret it doesn't have so much water, so it's dry. You have to put in some water. Do this with care, so just a few drops and put them right on the glass like this and that's all they need. Just a few little drops and I cannot say you should do it every week it also depends on the weather or on if there's a heating on, if there's a heating on, it can dry out much easier. So sometimes in winter your plant is sooner dried out than in summer, the bottle is wider on the bottom than on the top. So the water that gets up with the air will condense here and go down again. So it circulates inside the bottles so there is not so much loss of water as with a normal plant. So you don't have to put so much water as in with your normal hedera or fern and then I want to show you an example of a fern that's already more than a year old. So it will grow in the end, inside the bottle and will stop growing until it's, sometimes it gets out, but not too much. So this is one of the final products that you will get. I wish you a lot of joy with your green little secret, and I hope it brings you a lot of positive karma. 7. Project: Upload a picture of your Green little secret: Of course we all want to see what you made. So what is your green little secret and where do you put it? Upload the picture of your green little secret so we can all enjoy it.