How to Make a Closed Terrarium

1. Introduction: K, I'm Sam. And today I'm going to be walking you through how to create your own closed terrarium. Throughout this class, I'm going to be covering the difference between open and closed terrariums. So you can have a better understanding of which Terrarium would work best for you. I'll also be covering the materials that you'll be needing in order to create your own terrarium and why each of them is important. We'll also be giving you some ideas as to plants that you can use in your terrarium and providing you with some resources in case you would still like to look at some more options. After we cover materials, I'm going to be giving you a demonstration and showing you step-by-step how to build your own terrarium. After the demo. Once we have our terrarium altogether, then we can go over the maintenance requirements and we'll follow that up with our class project. So let's get started by looking at what is the difference between an open terrarium and a closed terrarium. 2. Closed vs. Open Terrariums: Alright, so you've decided you want to create your own terrarium. Now the next thing you need to figure out is whether you want to make an open terrarium or close terrarium. Now, obviously from the title of this video will be focused on making a close terrarium in this class. But let's just take a minute and talk about the difference between the two so, you can figure out which one would work best for you. This here is an example of a closed terrarium. So there's four walls. There's roof and a bottom. So there's no part. This is open and exposed to the air. It does, however, have this little latch here, I can open. So I can still put all my plants and materials inside. And then it has this little hook. So from time to time I can open it and allow some air to get into the terrarium. And I'll talk more about why you want to do that in the maintenance lesson. Open terrariums, On the other hand, are basically the exact opposite. They are always open and exposed to the air, as you can see from this example over here. Then though the difference between an open and a closed terrarium may seem small, It's important to understand which type of terrarium you're creating. Because the small differences will affect what type of plants you can grow in your terrarium, how often you're going to need to water and where you'll be able to keep your terrarium. So for close terrarium, when you're choosing plants, you wanna go with plants that will do well in indirect light. And this is because seeing as the terrarium is closed, it's going to hold in a lot more moisture. And if you have your terrarium situated in an area with direct light, you could end up burning the leaves of your plants. And speaking of moisture, you wanna make sure that the plants that you choose are going to do well in a moist, humid environment. So if you were planning on creating a terrarium that is full of succulents. You'll want to check out my class on creating an open terrarium Instead. Some plants that do work really well in a closed terrarium are ferns. So I'll be using this silver laced Fern here. And I also have this white rabbit's foot fern. And then just to give me a bit more texture and some different color to my terrarium. I'm gonna throw in this bromeliads. And this Cryptanthus is also known as Earth's star. And as you can see, it's gotten a bit more of a purple color to it, so it'll add a bit more interest to the terrarium. Some other plants to consider could be pilea, baby's tears, or a nerve plant. There are tons of plants that you can use in a close terrarium though. So if you'd like some more recommendations, I've included the links to a few helpful websites in the resource section. And whichever plants you do decide to go with, try to pick an odd number of plants, and also try to choose plants that have varying heights. And I'll explain the reason for that more in the demonstration. So now that you have an idea as to what kind of plants you can use in your terrarium and the environment that they are going to require. Let's look at some other materials that you'll be needing. 3. Materials Required: There are quite a few things that you will need in order to make your own terrarium. The main things that you will be needing are a clear, saleable container to keep your plants in. Some plants, activated charcoal, coco peat or peat moss, rocks, soil, and a spray bottle for watering. Some optional materials that you may want. Are decorations, like the little lady bug here, or some small tools. If the opening of your terrarium is too small to fit your hand in, then you might want to have a little trowel or maybe you could even use a spoon to help move things around. Other than that, you might want to get a pair of gloves if you're going to be using the activated charcoal because it can be quite messy. So starting with the main materials that you will need, having plants and something to put them in is probably the most obvious. Now in the last lesson, we did go over a few different options that you could use for plants, but we didn't go over the different container options for your terrarium. So let's take a look at some of those now. The container that I'm using for my terrarium is a little bit more on the fancy side because it's made out of glass. And it also has this little latch here that I can use to prop it open. But you can also make a beautiful terrarium using an old glass jar. Or you could even use an old fish tank that you're no longer using for fish, which is what I made my first terrarium out of. And even seeing people take an old coffee pot that still has a lid and turn that into a terrarium. Basically, though, you can use anything that is see-through and sealable. That way, you can still see your plants. Your plants can still get the sunlight and having it sealable will help hold in that moisture and humidity that we want for our plants. So with that being said, you don't have to choose something that is made out of glass. Either you could use acrylic or plastic as well. The next thing that you're going to need is some rocks. You're going to be using rocks to help give us some drainage. Seeing as there is no holes in the bottom of our containers, there's nowhere for the water to go. So the rocks are going to help keep our roots from becoming saturated and starting to rot, make sure you go with a smaller rocks. So the ones that I have here are mini pea gravel. Next up is activated charcoal. And this step isn't absolutely necessary because the main purpose of adding activated charcoal is to promote drainage. So if you wanted to skip this step, you could just add some extra rocks instead. But aside from promoting drainage, activated charcoal can also help remove any impurities from the water, and it can help keep your terrarium from developing any foul odours that may come from any leaves falling and decomposing. The next thing that we're going to be adding to our terrariums is our coco peat or our peat moss. Now this layer is going to act as a bit of a barrier between our soil and our rocks. So we don't end up with our soil seeping through and ending up in the rocks because then we wouldn't really have any drainage. And I'm going to be using coco peat. And I have it here in just these little, little pucks. And I'm going to add water to them that'll make them expand. And then I can just kind of pull it apart. And then there's my coco peat. The final thing that you're going to need is some soil. Regular potting mix should do well for any plants that you're using in your terrarium. Once you have all your materials together, we can get started on putting together our terrariums 4. Demonstration: So to start off with, we're gonna add our rocks or I'm going to add it until it's about an inch deep. I'm going to be skipping the activated charcoal layer and then add about another half an inch to smooth that out. Make sure it's placing given and that's it. Further rocks. If you are adding charcoal, you're going a layer, this boat half an inch deep. And some of it is going to end up falling through some rocks, but that's okay. Just reminder if you are going to be using charcoal, you may want to put gloves on before you start this or use a spoon or a mini travel in order to distribute the charcoal because it can be very messy. And see you've added in your extra rocks or your activated charcoal. You can go ahead and add in your coco peat or your peat moss, as I showed you in the materials lessen. My coco peat came in these little pucks. So I've soaked one of them. And now I'm going to pull it apart and add that to my cerium. So I'm just going to apply my cocoa P and a thin layer over my rots. And now as you can see, the rocks that are all covered in a nice even layer. Now that we're done with our coco peat, we can move on to adding in our soil. So I'm going to take my potting mix here and add it until it's about an inch and a half deep because that's about how deep my Rick Toby. And then once you're done with soil, you can start adding in your plants. These are the plants that aren't going to be using in my cerium. I've divided them into smaller plants as you can see, so they'll fit better. And I'm only going to be using the one type of Fern because even after dividing the rabbit's foot fern, it was still too big. I'm only going to be using one of these crept Tantalus plants. But I have both ism here. So once I get the friends in, I can see which one of these is going to work best. I'm going to start off here by planting one of my ferns. As I move away the soil, I'm gonna be careful that I don't dig too deeply and ended up removing my layer of coco peat. One of the leaves here is damaged, so I'm gonna go in with my seculars and just remove that one. And now I'm gonna go ahead and plant my other firm. And then finally, I'm going to add in my little kept canthus. Now that my plants are in place, I'm going to add in some decorations. So here's the cerium. All done. I added in my little ladybug here. And then some of these little white rocks for decoration. As you can see, the plants are fairly spaced out, so they all have a bit more room that they can grow within this term Mariam. Now the last thing I'm gonna do here is take my spray bottle and just give it a quick missed all throughout the cerium when I'll close the lid here so I can sealant that moisture and start creating a human environment that we want. Now that everything is nice and watered and I'm just gonna close the lid. And as you can see here, these little droplets are going to work their way down into the soil. And then once they evaporate the work, their way back onto the glass and then fall back down again and sort of recycle now that we have everything watered. And let's take a look at how we can maintain a healthy cerium. 5. Maintaining a Healthy Terrarium : One of the great things about a closed area is that it's very low maintenance. So because it's closed, it's going to hold in a lot of moisture. So you only need to water it about once a month as you would with other plants. Just check the soil c, if it is still Damn, you wanna make sure when you're watering that you don't create huge pools of water in the bottom. You want to keep an eye on where the water level is compared to your rocks. And other thing you're going to want to do is open up the contrarian to let some fresh air. And you want to do this for about half an hour to an hour, one day each month. And the purpose of this is just to get some fresh air in there. Even though we want it to be nice and humid. We also don't want it to be so humid that we start developing algae either on the sides or on top of our soil because this could negatively affect our plants. Other than that, all you really need to do is make sure your cerium is kept in a spot with indirect sunlight. So the humidity was in the cerium, doesn't end up causing your leaves to burn. 6. Class Project : So seeing as the purpose of this class was to learn how to create your own close to Merriam. You are project for this class is going to be to do just that using the tools and guidelines that were discussed for your project. I want you to take a picture of all of your materials that you're going to use before. And then take a picture of the final result where you have it all put together. Once you have those pictures, you can take them and upload them under the project section so we can all see your new trillion and I can offer you some feedback. As I mentioned before, I have a few resources for you under the resource section that you can check out if you need some extra help. If you want to keep up to date on any of my future classes, you can hit the Follow button and you'll be notified every time I post to the class. I hope you found this class really helpful. And I look forward to seeing your triremes.