Reviewing Terrarium Kit From Menards

Hey, what's up garden friends? Jeff here. Hope you're doing well. I'm great. Hey, Turbo. How you doing, baby? I know everything's a mess. So, I've been filming tons and tons of videos today, hence the mess that's going on out here. And uh I needed a break from walking around and doing stuff. And I thought, you know what? Let's sit down and have a look at this moth terrarium kit that I picked up from Menard's the other day. I really haven't even looked at it. I was there with Bae. We were trying to find a set screw for something. They were trying to find a set screw. I was bored cuz they were being too picky. I found one that fit immediately and they were like, "I don't know. We could find something different." Whatever. So, I wandered and uh passed this up on a shelf. I believe this was on sale for $14.99 at the time. Pardon the dirt. I just potted up all that stuff from that crab apple over there. Well, that's an interesting thing that might be fun to talk about. This would probably be a good wintertime video to do in the grow space, but I felt like sitting down and having a look at it right now. So, hey, that's what's going on. A minute into the video and all I really had to say was I bought a moss terrarium kit. I'm going to open it up and see what's going on with it. All right, let's have a look at this thing. I really haven't done any research on this or exploring. So, I'm just going to show you all what I can see. Contains three different live mosses. Oh, I wonder what kind will be in there. Oh, there they have other types back here. And it says, "Collect them all. Get all your mosses. Pillow moss, fern moss, haircatap moss, mood moss, star moss, and deerfoot moss." Okay. Says it has a bowl, a bag with three different life mosses, river gravel, accent stones, and a moss mister, which you know is that's a that' just be a water bottle, right? I'm curious about the state of the moss that's in here. Is it going to look like it's alive or is it be all brown? Which is okay if it is brown. Moss can rebound and do just fine. Oh, here we go. Oh, good. They labeled it. There is a very, very, very small piece of sheet moss. It is little, but it looks okay. It's not totally desiccated. Little bit of moisture. And I think that that should end up doing just fine. We have instructions here. Do you want to see the rest of the moss first before we get to the boring part, which is the instructions? Oh, good. Deer moss. That's fun. That's going to do a whole bunch of nothing. That's a waste of time. And some sun moss, which is going to end up being fairly similar to the well to the sheet moss, but it's going to have a more tall upright pillowy growth to it, where the sheet moss is going to be kind of a sheet and spread more. Um, this isn't really ever going to do anything, but it will look cool, I suppose. Let's have a look at the instructions here. Oh, the cork on top. It says it has an LED light in it. And it comes with batteries. Bag of three mosses. Moons, sheet moss, sun moss, deer moss. Well, that's four they just listed there. So, that's interesting. Multicolored river gravel, which I assume is in here. Oh, there's just some stones. Nice looking stones. There's another bag down in here that has some Okay, some river grapple. All right. Wow, this is an awful lot of information here for put down rocks, put moss in container, add water, and add light. I'll give it a reading. See if there's anything in there that's worthwhile. Okay. Something I do find interesting, and that's true to an extent, is they do talk about using distilled water or rain water, decorated water. That might be something to consider. I have always used tap water with my mosses. They've always been fine, but that's going to vary from place to place. I have Aro water in the house for the fish tanks. So, I have that to use. Also, something else I found interesting is they talk about probably having to cut the mosses because you likely won't use all of that, which has me really wondering how tiny is this little bowl. I'm guessing it must be really small if they're saying that there's not going to be room to use all that. You know, this abundance of moss that's down here. So, I got my box cutter. Just peel that open. No big deal. Is it going to be plastic? It said glass, didn't it? Yeah, it says glass terrarium. Oh, okay. This isn't that small. I think this is good for just a little cute little desktop decoration. I can see why they would say that you may not use all the moss because it is very small. But that's to be expected. This wasn't a very big kit, right? Wasn't expecting this to be super spacious. It's just something cool you can set on a bookshelf. I wonder if the light has a timer on it. That would be nice. You know how a lot of like string lights, fairy lights, just various lights. You turn them on at whatever time you want them to turn off and then they run for that like 8 hours usually and then they'll turn off on their own and just turn back on on their own every day. That would be nifty. I doubt it, but who knows? I suppose we'll find out about that maybe. Here's the gravel, which I should rinse. I'm probably not going to, although heading inside to the sink and washing my hands wouldn't be a terrible idea right now. I would just like to get a nice look at these. I'm picky about my stone. I tend to like darker tones. Oh, yeah. That's going to be really pretty. That's going to have a nice look to it. So, okay. All right. I'm going to take this inside. Give it a rinse. Just poured most of that on the ground. And grab some water to soak the moss in as well. You got to see this. Look it. Look it. Wet stone always looks so much better, doesn't it? Really good color. All the darks and the lights. Nice stuff. I just use tap water to rinse it, but I did use water from my RO system for the moss. Just any filtered water would be fine. I'm going to take the moss and give it a dunk into this water. I think that that would probably be wise. The directions did say something about doing something along those lines. Oh, I forgot to wash all the dirt out of my nails while I was in there. Well, you know what? It's It's already there. There's no reason to pretend it's not. This is a gardening channel after all. Dirty nails happen. I get that in there. Give it a soak. Not too long, just until it's absorbed a lot of that water. And then they say to uh dry that off with a paper towel. I didn't bring a paper towel out here, so I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to submerge that. Let it get wet. Then I'll just set it down for a minute or so and let a lot of the water run out of it. In the meantime, while this is having a soak, do that. Sink them down to the bottom. Want to make sure those are hydrated really well to start things off with. The more hydrated the moss is, when you start things off, the easier it's going to be moving forward as far as not having to mist it all that much. Now, this part I should have brought like a paper funnel or something. This is a fairly flexible bowl. Get that in there. Trying to point away from my microphone so it's not too obnoxious. I would prefer a smaller gravel, but that's okay. This will work. Make sure I get all this rock out of there. I don't want that to end up in the dishwasher. And then I suppose the rest of this is just playing around with it until you think it looks cute. I do like that this has a nice wide opening at the top, so that makes a lot easier if you want to put a larger stone or some sticks with some branches in there. Makes that much more simple. They did say to remove debris from the moss. Not going to do that. I don't think there's a reason to. I like having the sticks and things in my terrariums. I think they add some character. I wish I had some alder cones. I love the way alder cones look sprinkled on top of moss. looks really cool when you can do that. All I've done there is just opened it up very gently. Try not to squeeze it. And I know it looks brown right now, but if this moss has some life in it, then it should spring back to life no problem on its own. And chances are one of these moss varieties is going to dominate over the other one. And it's probably going to be the sheet moss more than likely. A lot of that water get out of there. That's already green enough. Looking really good. So, I could split this up and put it in different spots. I'm not going to. I'm just going to put it in there like this. So, all that brown stuff on the bottom is facing down and put it right in here. I don't think I'm going to use any of these big rocks that came with it. I feel like I'm supposed to use everything cuz I'm supposed to be showing the kit, but I'm in this more for the moss than I am the rocks. Yeah. So, I've never actually tried, by the way, growing moss with just rocks. I know that you can, but I have always had it on top of some sort of media, whether that be soil, which they really don't need, or um even just charcoal, carbon, really, activated carbon used for the fish tanks. I do that sometimes in my springtail cultures. I'll put moss in there and let them both go to town with each other. That works nicely. Set this down in between these guys. Have some separation between them, I suppose. I don't know. I really don't think need all this in here, but it came with it. I'm supposed to be showing the product. So, there it is. Oh, and I forgot I have that stupid piece of deer moss over here. Pop that open. that. I mean, you can you can go ahead and give it a dunk in the water if you really want to, but I don't think it's necessary. It does make it much easier to work with. So, there is that. The deer moss I'll put back here in the corner like that. And then go ahead and pop this on top. It doesn't need to be misted. Everything has just been soaked, so that's not going to be necessary off the bat. And let me see about this light. Is there a tab or something I have to pull or what? Just turn on. So you turn this and then a light goes on. We're outside so can't even really tell something happened. Nope. Nothing happened there. Let's see. Is there a tab? An onoff tab? There should be like a piece of plastic you pull. Sometimes with these you have to twist them a certain direction. It says the battery is included and I didn't see a battery in that box. So, it should already have a battery in it. Oh, okay. There's a piece of paper in there. So, there we go. No tab, but piece of paper. Doing the same thing. Keeping the contacts away from each other. Probably should have tried this out before. Going for There we go. Lights on. Again, I don't know what difference that's going to make just yet because, well, we're outside. But, well, you can kind of see that on there. The cork does have a nice seal on the top. I guess this would be a fun thing to have out on the bookshelf. I think I'll probably throw some springtails in here just cuz well, why not, right? Throw some springtails in there. Maybe a little bit of carbon. Help keep things cleaned up and looking nice. Oh, and here's the little water bottle that it came with. Not much to it. It's just a cheap as you can get water bottle. I don't know why I just instinctively it's bothering me. I want to have a layer of carbon or charcoal. I use carbon, aquarium carbon on the bottom to help keep things nice and clean. And then a little bit of soil with the rocks on top. And then I can add the springtails and some other things have this as more of a bioactive setup, but it is moss. That's just not really necessary with the moss. As long as there's moisture, they should grow. Well, and light. They need moisture and light. Whether or not this is going to function as a grow light, I don't know. Time will tell. Switch that off. It's wasting the battery. Why won't it turn off? Turn off. Got to hold it down on one side and twist it the other way. There we go. Oh, no. Turn off. There we go. Okay, now I need to go find my spring. I think I have some spring tails out here. I don't remember where they are, but I know I have some around here somewhere. All right. Probably not the wisest way to do this, but I have this bulb over here that is rotting and it is loaded with springtails. I don't know if you can see them, but they're in there. See all those springtails running around in there? Little white dots. Oh, and an earwig. Okay. I hate earwigs. They bite and it hurts. I'm just going to shake this in there. Don't need a lot. Just a few. Shake some of those off. Now, we have some critters in there in theory to help keep it clean. I don't know if they haven't gotten there or not. Jeez, there's a centipede in there, too. And another earwig. You know what? I don't I shouldn't be using this. All right. I think there's hope with this. This is a springtail culture from 2021. I checked on it not that long ago and there were still a bunch in here. Like a booming population actually. Shockingly, I'm just going to take some pieces of this charcoal that's in here and pop that into this. So, if there are any springtails on them, then they can get down in here. And I like the way their charcoal looks as it is. And I think it's a good idea to have some of that inside of these setups. I think it adds to it. I like the darkness and everything. This is so old. Who knows what it's doing as far as purification goes, but uh yeah, something just to add some life into that. So now I will go ahead pop the top on here and then give it a few weeks and we'll come back and talk about it. see how it was doing in the house. And you know, if that moss greened up, how often I had to water it, which will probably be not much or maybe at all. Let's just give it two weeks and see what it's looking like. All right, it's been about round up and say almost 6 weeks. I filmed that video October 12th. Today's November 21st. Got to give those things some time. A lot's happened since then, too. Traveled and moved the plants inside. Got everything ready to go for winter. It's really neither here nor there. I took the terrariums. I say pal because there's another one. And put them over here underneath the grow lights. I'm going need to explain why. Right. Well, after about 3 days, 4 days, the batteries died. So, the light was no good. And it's just a general rule of thumb. really shouldn't be sticking glass rounded objects in a window cuz you know you could burn your house down. So, I figured, well, let's put underneath the grow lights. All these cactus and succulents, they're doing well under there. Let's see how these mosses do. What do you think? I mean, I don't know if any of us were expecting something spectacular here, but maybe a little bit more than this, right? Not a lot going on in here. It's fairly warm. That shouldn't be an issue. No cold temperatures, not too much water, just enough. There's some condensation that would form every morning, which is something you want to see in a terrarium. Yeah. Yeah. Not not looking too good, is it? Except look at this. Got some action here. So, these things take time, right? That's a terrarium full of dried moss that wasn't really live. potentially was packed as live moss, but that's not going to do anything for you unless some of those spores survive. You introduce them to a nice moist environment and you can grow some moss. You can see here, this lid is nice and tight, which is great for a terrarium. That's a good thing. This light though, I mean, what's the point? This is really just for ambience, right? It's going to make it look nice, I suppose, and light it up for decorative purposes. I almost said purses. That's not the right word. You're going to need a different source of light for this. And this is how they're doing underneath those grow lights. And they're what, 14 in below the lights that are growing cactus and succulents. Don't know. I don't know. You decide. The jar is cute. It's an interesting concept. You might need to source some different moss. That's the only thing here. And we can pull that out. pull this guy out. It's not doing anything at this point if it hasn't started to. I don't think that it's going to, right? That's just a big piece of dead moss, which actually, you know what? Leave it in there. That's all right. Get something for the springtails to have a little habitat on. They can bounce around on there and chew on it. Give them a snack. I do have some actual live moss here. Right here. That's this kind. Easy to work with. Pull a chunk of this off. Take that. Put it down in here. Boom. Look at that. That looks a lot better, doesn't it? Something green that's not just brown and dry and dying. Most of the mosses can dry out for a pretty long time. So, it not rebounding within, I'd say, 2 weeks. That's not a good sign. Generally, that's what it takes. These showed up with some green on them. They had a good amount of brown, too. And within, I'd say maybe 48 hours, nice and green again. And it's in a it's not even in a terrarium. I've just have them sitting there in the bag to help hold in some of that moisture. Yeah. This isn't type of battery either. I should mention that. Where you can just pop it out and throw it in one. They're those cell batteries. Getting the thing apart is kind of a pain. And uh you know those little cell batteries, they're not cheap. You don't want to be going through a ton of those, right? Yeah. I don't know if you want to change one of those out every 3 days. So, I guess I should mention, too, that these were left on for about 12 hours. Typically, if you're relying on an artificial light source, then it's going to need to be on anywhere from, I guess, depending on the plant, 8 to, I don't know, 13, maybe even up to 16 hours. It all depends on the plants, right? So, I left them on for about 12 hours each. that that's all I got was 3 days. I said each cuz there's that other terrarium. I need to exclude that from this video. That's going to be confusing. Okay, now let's talk about this right here, the reindeer moss. This is not a moss. This is a lyken. And they are fine for terrariums, but don't expect any growth out of them. Moss and lykan are not the same things. Lykan are actually very fascinating organisms. I want to say plant but kind of plant I suppose you can call it a plant. So a lyken is a composite organism. So that means that they have fungus and algae or algae and a type of syobacteria and those two things work together to create the liken. They are together. They live together. They they do everything together. They metabolize together. One of them is photosynthetic. The other one digests and uh breaks things down, right? It gets more complicated than that, but that's not what this video is about. Yeah, it's still nice and soft. These are usually sold very dry and crunchy and hard. And I usually use these when they're dried and like a a desertcape terrarium because they look kind of like a well, like a a deserty bush, right? So, it's not going to hurt to have this in the terrarium, but without airflow and a very specific environment and temperature, I wouldn't expect much out of the lyken, but that's not always the case. And reindeer lykan's pretty sturdy and tough. It doesn't break down all that quickly. So, there's nothing wrong with having it in there. It has lots of space in it for the critters to run around. And by critters, I mean springtails. I had dropped some springtails in here. But um well, it's not a moss and it's something that you can get relatively cheap from a lot of craft stores, which is true about these other preserved mosses. And you can get life out of those preserved mosses, too. So, you can usually buy some dried moss and keep it moist. And usually there's some spores that will come back to life for you. Not always. It's a roll of the dice. Better to shop for a live moss. Now, like I said, I think this is kitschy. I think it's cute. And I think whether or not your moss is going to do anything for you is going to be a luck of the draw kind of situation. It's not an all-in-one kit because that light is useless outside of it just being a little knob you can turn to add a little bit of light to the inside. I wouldn't rely on that to grow your plants because they're going to need much more light than what you're going to get from this. And then the battery life, I mean, come on. It's just it doesn't make sense. It's stupid. Okay. And pardon all the reflection. It's really hard to film through glass objects. We just we got to accept it. There you go. There's a better view. Don't think there's enough going on with the springtails in there to get to see them. And we put a few in. Not very many. This didn't need very many. There wasn't a ton to break down. I want them to break things down too fast either because well, I wanted to make sure that if there were spores and things in there that they would be able to come back to life or germinate really start growing. Yeah. I don't know. This is something you could do with a mason jar. and a five minute walk in the woods, right? But cute. Might make a good gift. Just, you know, something to give somebody with low expectations. Okay. Well, hey, thanks for hanging out. Comments, suggestions, some fun, easy terrarium type things you do. Things that you have to contribute about mosses, things you use in your terrariums. I love good moss. They're so green and lush. They're just nice to have around for the terrariums. That is I'm going to leave this as is. It's probably not going to do much, but I'll put it back over there underneath that growite for another several weeks and we'll see what it does. Right. Maybe this just isn't the ideal environment. I usually do have my mosses on top of some sort of substrate that's more like a soil or even some core can do the trick. It's just I don't know. I've never done just rocks, but there's nothing wrong cuz I also keep moss just as a sheet, right? This is probably a month old and I'm just keeping it moist in a spot that gets filtered bright light and it's been fine. Okay. Yeah. Hey, hope everybody's doing well. I'm having a great day, a great life and everything's going absolutely beautiful for you. Keep on growing. Bye-bye.