Ikea Wall Hanging Terrarium

Hey, what's up, gardener friends? Oh, that's supposed to be on me. Okay, that's better. Hey, what's up, gardener friends? Jeff here. How's everybody doing? I hope you're doing well. I'm okay. I'm just sitting out here in the grow space, a beautiful snowy day outside. Lots and lots of snow, freezing cold. Can't turn the heater off. I had it off for a video earlier today and it dropped to like 52 in here. So got to keep that running. And, uh, I'm just potting up a couple of plants. I'm not trying to make anything beautiful here. I have a couple of ferns here, different types of ferns, both of which are ones that just don't do well for me when they're free range and in their own pots. First up is one of my favorites. It's a heart fern, really nice texture on these. Look at that leaf. Isn't that such a beautiful plant? Really, really, really good plant for terrariums. And then over here, it's a micro storm. It's a, um, what is it? Crocodile fern. I don't remember the full name. I think I saw the tag microsorum something or other. Mucifolium. That's funny. Like banana leaf, banana leaf fern. Interesting. Yeah. We call it crocodile fern. I think banana leaf fern sounds a lot better. No, wait, is it that Musa means long or that it means banana? I don't remember. It's banana leaf. Looked it up. That was going to drive me crazy. So as I said, both these ferns, I just don't do well with them if they aren't inside of some sort of enclosed environment. And I originally got these to use in a different sort of terrarium setup. I'm not sure when or even if I'm going to be getting to that anytime soon. So I'm going to use this terrarium jar here. This is one of the proven winners terraform terrarium things. I picked up some of these on clearance during the holidays. That was the normal price. I paid like eight bucks. It's pretty good, right? Not a lot to it. I think there are only a few plants in here. I've pulled some of the plants out and use them for other terrariums. Kind of why I bought them. I was like, Oh, I'll just scrap those other plants. It had a Hoya in here that I'm just not that interested in. So I'm going to pull that out. It was never looking too good from the get, which I was fine with. Cause you know, like I said, it was like $8 for this thing and a chunk of moss that was seen better days. That's for sure. But it'll be okay. Right? I mean, that just needs some moisture needs some moisture and it'll come back looking awesome. I don't have an idea for this as far as aesthetics is concerned. I just kind of want to get these plants up in something that's more well maintenance. Just trying to make my life easier here. This does have a drainage layer and I don't see any charcoal or anything like that, but that's okay. Don't always have to use that. I think I should just, you know, there's not a lot of space in here either. I should talk about that. Um, well, there's not a lot of space. Should probably use something larger. I don't intend on this being permanent, but it's going to need to last for a while, probably a few months at the max. Really. I could actually probably just set these inside of there. I'm not going to do that. I think it'd be more fun to plant them up. Don't you? Yeah. It'd be a lot more fun. I'm gonna go ahead and get this guy pulled out of here very gently. These are fragile little ferns. Their roots are so delicate. Come in here and pull out some of the dead leaves while I have it like this. That is one thing about these ferns. I don't like to disturb their roots all that much. So, well, how the heck is that going to work? I guess I could add more soil into here. I'm just going to roll the dice and loosen the roots up. It'll probably be fine. It's being moved into a nice moist environment. This is working really well. That soil is just falling all over the place. All right. Well, Hey, I tried. I tried. This is, it's going to be great. Nevermind the mess. Don't look at the mess. The bowl's catching everything. I wish this was bigger because I just remembered. I also have a maiden hair fern that would probably prefer to be inside of something like this right now. It's in my kitchen and one of those little Ikea greenhouse setups, but who knows how long that's going to last? Not the greenhouse, the fern inside the Ikea setup. I don't think I could squeeze three into here though. I'd be pushing it. Okay. Things just took a turn from what was going to be, Oh, this is going to be quick and easy to being fairly more complicated, significantly more complicated, but it's going to look a lot better when it's done. Okay. All right. Yeah. It needs a cleanup. That's all right. I'm not gonna worry about cleaning up till the video's done. Cause as far as the, you know, crudiness goes, that just helps with reflection. It's better for the windows to be a little bit foggy if I'm filming. So this is a, uh, this, I don't remember what it's called. I got this from Ikea a long, long, long time ago. It has little brackets. You can hang it on the wall. I don't know. I don't know what it's called. I'm going to use it for a terrarium, which was of course not its intended purpose. And hopefully it will do well. The moss hasn't done great in here, but I think once I get some soil and some materials inside of this, that will help hold on to some moisture, then they should do better. Right? Tell me it's going to do better. All right. Have faith in me. I think it's going to be great. Just need something to hold on to some moisture and it won't dry out so quickly. There's rust in here. Yeah. It's not a lot. It's fine. Okay. Got that cleared out. Now let's see if I have everything I need to make up a forest mix to put in here. And what I mean by forest mix is just a soil blend. That's going to hold on to moisture, but still hold on to a lot of oxygen. Let me use this container to mix it up in container that has a hole in the bottom. So that'll be nice. That'll be nice. I do have some peat moss here. It's old, but that shouldn't matter. Bag popped open for some of that in there. I also had some coconut, which I could use, but I pulled it out from the bottom of a sansevieria that I picked up from Lowe's that it was just really wet. I don't think it'd be a great idea to use that. That was way too much. I am not going to need anywhere near that much. Okay. Yeah. I think that's good. And then, oh, this actually works out well. I was just repotting an orchid. I have some leftover mix here. It's long fiber, sagna moss and bark. I feel like I should probably add a few scoops of sand into this, but well, the bucket I keep my sand in is buried behind a bunch of things. I had to bring in all the plants that I usually keep outside, even all winter long, all the deciduous shrubbery. So I can't get to the bucket of sand. And this isn't meant to be super long-term anyway. So really just making sure that I have this with some various textures, different particle sizes, and some, you know, stuff in there to help hold onto moisture. I think that'll be good enough. I could probably maybe add a little bit more sagna moss. I don't know. Usually you just want to push down and make sure it bounces back up on you. It's not quite doing that. I am also, I'm putting way too much thought into this because like I said, this is not meant to be a long-term terrarium. This is, you know, I mean now that I'm doing it this way, maybe for a few months, but eventually the crocodile fern and the maidenhair fern are going to outgrow this thing. I got to do it. I don't know how I'm going to get to the sand but I'm going to try and figure it out. Goodness. That was an adventure. It actually, it wasn't that bad. I was able to go around everything to the other side. That's just a bunch of fine white sand. There it is. Right there. There's my pile of soil. I'm leaving on my desk. Just mix this up by hand. Although I did just have to pull a whole bunch of little tiny thorns out of my hand. So there's some, I don't know what they're called. Glock heads. They're like little fiberglass kind of threads that come off of a Apuntia cacti and some other plants. But the Apuntia cacti are the ones I'm the most familiar with having those. And for some reason, this mix has a whole bunch of that in it. And I just went back with my hands again, like a really smart person, huh? And I added some water into here. I'm going to give that some time. Soak that up. And in the meantime, reach over here and grab the terrarium. Bring that back over here. Pop this guy open and start placing some plants. There we go. Now the false bottom. It would be a good idea, but the way this terrarium shaped, I just, I don't know. I'm not going to bother. It doesn't make sense. I could, if I really want to do something longterm in here, I would, what I would do is go get another piece of acrylic, cut it to about probably this height to run across the front here. And then I would take some silicone, seal this up, make sure everything's nice and watertight, probably clean this up, put some sort of a Flex Seal sealant on there. And then I would have a slightly thicker layer to work with. I'm just going to, I'm just going to mount everything up to the back. This isn't watertight. So the moisture is going to drain out of there. I'm not all that hung up on making sure that I have a layer for water to drain into and then get pulled back up and evaporate and condense. And you know, to do all the things you want in a closed terrarium, it's semi-closed, but water can get out of this. So, well, I'm not trying to figure out a way to keep water from collecting in there. I'm also just shaking over to my side. I have a bucket and get a little bit of that soil off this maiden here for not too much. It's not a plant that really likes having its roots messed with. So just a smidge that's going to go back here in that corner like that. Again, this is temporary. I mean that's pretty much the case with any terrarium that I do. Unless I'm able to find lots of plants that are going to stay really, really small, pretty much nothing, but a bunch of temporary things going into them. Crocodile fern here are Microsorum mucifolium, mucifolia, mucifolium. I don't remember. Do that right there. It has some white stuff on it. That's from, well, it's pot stuff from, I was drilling holes in a pot and some of that liquid spilled over the table and got into the leaves. That's how it dries up. It's going to be not fun trying to achieve that kind of amount of soil, but we can do it. I have this one right here in the front. So that's going to be the new soil depth. Right there. What I'm going to do now is I'm just going to start grabbing my soil and I'm going to start piling that up. I'm going to start in the back. You know, that's pretty much all there is to it. I'm just mounting the soil up around everything. This is actually going to be pretty simple because I'm not doing the false bottom and everything. Also, this reminds me, I need to order more horticultural charcoal because I am completely out. So if I had wanted to do this, the more appropriate way, I wouldn't even have had that option. This is an interesting angle I'm trying to work with here so that y'all can see everything and I'm able to work at the same time. We'll see how well that works out. Also, I maybe didn't mix up enough soil. I didn't really realize how high I was going to be mounting this up the back there. If I do have enough, then it's just barely going to be enough. Sometimes I just pile it up big in the back and then I'll swoop it forward to fill in the gaps easier that way. Since I have this thing with such that dramatic slope, right? That slope also helps that it's pre moistened because I can mold it. I don't, you know, like building a sandcastle, sort of, even though the soil is very loose and oxygen rich. So not holding onto a ton of moisture. No, it's holding onto plenty of moisture. It's not holding onto a ton of its shape. It's holding on plenty of moisture and it is loose and bouncy. I have this stick here and I probably should have done this first. Crap. I was going to use that like a retaining wall in here like that. I can still do it. We can still make that work. Might have to lift a few things up. That's a hundred percent doable. It's going to scoop it in like that and give it a little twist. Actually, I like the way that that worked out because it fits in more naturally with everything. Okay. I like that. Okay, listen, I'm out of the mix, the terrarium mix. I'm just putting a little bit of potting soil down in here. It's fine. It's fine. It's totally fine. Everything's going to be fine. Really don't even need that much. Just trying to get a little bit in there. That way there's a base layer to set some of this moss on top of. Oh, I already like this. I shouldn't do it. I really want to. It would be so pretty in there. The cryptanthus, they probably don't need to be in a terrarium setting though. They can take really dry conditions. They make an excellent houseplant because of that. But I just think that, man, that would be so nice wedged down in there. It might be a bit much, might take away from everything. We already have the big strappy leaves. Yeah. Talk myself out of it. I had that cryptanthus either for a terrarium or to keep with my other cryptanthus nestled in the trunk of my queen palm. Not queen palm, my Eureka palm is around the corner. Okay. We've got all kinds of mosses here. They are looking sad, but that's okay. Don't worry. These will rehydrate and they will be just fine. Maybe not this one. This one might be dead. I don't know. That one's going to go live in the jar where I can give it lots and lots and lots of moisture. This is, that's a nice, more of a sheet moss and break a piece of that off. Tuck that down in this corner right here. Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me just place rocks and other things in here before I start tucking the moss in. I have a whole bunch of these little pieces of bark. I was thinking I might just, you know, just stick them back here against the wall. Yeah, I'm fine with that. A little bit random, but that's okay. I'm fine with it being random because it just means that I don't have to put them away and find a different place to keep them. In a perfect world, I think it would have been nice to have done something with the back, like a peat wall or something like that. So I could stick these things to the back like that and they'll hold if I just set them there. That's fine. But it just, you know, it's not flowing together quite how I would like it to. But this is fine though. I do like the way it looks. I prefer seeing even if it's just random pieces of bark, I prefer that over looking at the slate back. And this wasn't the kind of project where I had anticipated, you know, sticking things to the back of the container that was required. Much more planning. All right, I need to find some rocks. I don't have a huge selection of rocks to work with. Thought I did, but not really. The ones I have, I'm trying to get this one out from a pot sitting on the ground over here. They're kind of big. That'll still work. Not this. That's not going to work. That's way too big. This guy could probably. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's a better angle. I could get that guy pressed up here. I don't want a ledge right there. I want it to look like it's part of this whole thing. So it looks like there's a proper slope there. Okay. There can be a little bit of an overhang there actually. That's I'm okay with that. There's overhangs in nature and I don't think you'll even be able to see that overhang. So I am also going to probably sprinkle in some other sizes of gravel into this to help keep the soil from washing away when I water this. Okay. Yeah, I'm good with that. Now I'm just going to keep placing some moss in here. Oh, that's a nice moss. That's some nice fibers on it. I want the ones with the longer fibers up top. That kind of press them down. Oh, also you should really pre-moisten these things. If you're trying to use moss and it's looking like it's not in great shape, go ahead and moisten it before you start working with it. Don't do what I'm doing. I just kind of dove into this without really thinking. And well, here we are. Work with my dry, crunchy moss. This is going to require a good amount of moisture before I close it up. So that's the only reason I'm not really all that worried. I'm going to have to sprinkle all kinds of water onto this stuff to get it looking good again. I have so much more moss. I'm tempted to keep putting it in here, but I don't want to put so much in this that you can't even see where I'm going to put the gravel. And right up along the front like that, maybe. Hmm. I think it would make the most sense to have the moss up here. And that way I can have the gravel down lower. It's not even gravel. Let me grab it. It's these little slate chips just out of reach. There we go. All right. I got them. I don't even need very many of them. These guys right here. I want to make sure there's something down here in the front. If I had more moss and I would just moss the entire thing, but I don't. So I'm going to be using these guys. When these are washed, they can be washed a little bit better. They really match that stone in the back. That stone in the back is called a silvery stone. Really, really great for aquascaping. That's what I have it for. I have it for aquascaping, but I tend to use them more in terrariums than in the aquascapes. And as this moss grows, I can peel it off and put it down here in the front. That would probably be a smart thing to do. My only concern is that having too much gravel in the front here, it's going to start to look kind of contrived, right? Because that just you wouldn't have that in nature. But that's all right. That's all right. I just want to make sure I have a layer of something on here to help hold that soil in place when I water this in. And like I said, when I have more moss, it'll be fun to do moss across this whole thing. I think it would be awesome, hadn't thought it out. Because I didn't even realize I was going to be doing this terrarium today. But I think it would be really cool to do a moss wall on the back of this. There are several ways you could do that. I think the easiest way to do it would be to use some nylon netting and to fill it with a mix similar to what I made for this, but probably with a good amount more of the sphagnum moss that's going to help hold the structure together and then lay it out flat. Fold that over on top. So you just have a tiny little pad. You don't need a very thick pad. And then cut that to shape, maybe tie it, stitch it together and just hot glue it to the back or silicone it. That would work, too. And then you'd stick your moss into it. You can stick these wood pieces into it also and watch everything grow. I think that might be neat and not too complicated. I just don't have the materials to do that right now. But I think that someday when I try and make this more permanent, meaning when I do what I was saying before and I go through and I seal it, I should do that. I think I think that they should get a good seal when I do that. And then I will also do a little moss wall in the back. I kind of want it to look like we got movement with that rock here. Not that it really matters, because the moss is going to end up covering that up as it grows. I tend to like to take gravel like this with these, the shingle style and just let it fall and do its thing and I'll sweep it back up and let it keep falling and do its thing. Because that just looks more natural to me. Right. You end up with a bunch of pieces you got to clean up. But I don't mind that. I take the smaller pieces, toss them around on top of the bigger rock. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah, that's good. And I said, though, yeah, I think I would like it more if I just had moss everywhere and a finer round gravel in the front. But this is what I have. So that's what I'm using for right now. I'm coming here, give it a little spray down. You'll see what that looks like when it's darkened up. Make sure this moss gets nice and wet. I don't have as much luck with moss if I don't have it on top of a damp substrate. So even just placing it right on top of the rocks, that wouldn't probably wouldn't work all that well for me. But, you know, as long as things are really moist, then it'll work. But sometimes, you know, these things dry mostly in the beginning. We're kind of trying to figure out the flow of how frequently you need to water these sorts of setups, if at all. You know, I tend to try to make my terrariums very easy and low maintenance, ideally as closed as possible so I don't have to water them very much. But this one I have noticed when I've had this moss in here that got all dry and crunchy looking that it is going to require a good amount of moisture. But I think having the soil in here is going to make a big difference. Right now, I'm just I'm spraying down everything. I got it nice and moist in there. I would rather have to open the door and let things dry because there's too much moisture over there not being enough. And within several weeks, this moss will be looking pretty darn good. Probably just in time for me to need to take the thing apart, right? I won't necessarily need to take this apart. I have an acorn here. I should put the acorn in this. It's missing its hat, but that's OK. All right, I'll put it right there and go outside and find a more fresh one. But, you know, snow. And it's also three degrees outside. Yeah, Fahrenheit, three degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, I love it. Yeah, I know. I know I need to clean the glass off. I'll get it. Oh, I just found another piece of bark. All right, well, pull that piece of bark out. I bet I could still squeeze that in there. Yeah, that would probably go just fine over here in this corner like that. Yeah, yeah, perfect. Oh, that made it so much better. I do have some springtails. I was about to call it done with this, but they're sitting right next to me. So it just makes sense. I should probably go ahead and put these in there. Doesn't have to be a lot. Just some. And this isn't a fully bioactive enclosure. Bioactive meaning you want to have critters in there to help break things down. I just like using springtails. You know what I'm talking about? These are springtails and a bunch of fruit flies, too. OK, well, that's good to know. And everything's fine. That's OK. There can be some fruit flies. I'm not going to freak out about that. If fungus nets get in here, that's not that big of a deal. It's all about getting to a balance and it will balance itself out. The springtails, though, they're just these little tiny white flecks, little bitty critters. They're really hard to get on camera, and they are really good to try to work. So they eat a lot of mold, too. That's why I like them in a terrarium, because they're good at eating up the mold. And the way you get them out here is you just pour them. Get some of that water, pour that out, and then they're floating on top. Those little white specks, those are springtails. And yeah, I would have liked to have done this before I watered everything in, but that's OK. Just pour that in. And now there's springtails in there and some of them waked out. Some of that water waked out. Hopefully the springtails were captured by that moss. I'm guessing that they probably were. And yeah, they're going to help keep this clean. It'll take them some time, but they'll form their own little colony and their isopods are great to have in addition to the springtails, which are like roly polies. That's what those are. They'll help keep things nice and clean. But I don't have any of those. And I don't have a ton of decaying matter in here yet. So it's not fully necessary to have them. Here we go. What do we think? I like it. But of course I do. I made it. And this is completely unexpected. I thought I was going to come out here and pop a fern into this jar over here. And instead, I ended up planting a beautiful thing. Yeah. And then with this jar over here, I'm going to go ahead, get some moisture in here for this moss. Going to need a lot of it, actually. So I should probably just take the lid right off of there. Dump that in because I want this to stay very moist. That'll do it. And I'll put a clear lid on that and go put it over under the grow lights. And that moss will spring back to life here in a few weeks. It's just me better off in there. It wasn't doing well in this setup because I didn't have anything in there to hold in moisture. I just had the moss sitting there. No gravel, no soil, nothing. Now the moss. Oh, that's a lot of that's a lot of movement. That's very distracting. I should probably just open this up. There we go. All right. Less reflection. That's better. Moss does better when it has a substrate of some kind to sit on. Doesn't have to have it if you have a really nice moist environment. But this wasn't moist enough and it wasn't holding in the moisture well enough. So, yeah, this should do the trick, though. There's plenty of material in there to help hold that moisture in and that should help bring everything back to life. I don't have the names on these mosses. I cannot remember. One of them was just like a general like club moss. I believe more long fibered one. And then it wasn't a club moss. I don't even remember. I typically would go out and harvest my own moss. It's very easy to do. I have it all over my yard. But, you know, snow. So I'm not going to be doing that. I think this is good. And this moss needed a home. It needed a structure to live in and come to its own. I could remove this brown piece from this maidenhair fern back here. I'm going to go and leave it because that's going to decay and break down. This help add to the system. And I think that that will be good for the springtails. Although I think the springtails are going to have their work cut out for them as it is, maybe not necessary. I just don't need things to be perfect in here. I like for things to look more rough and natural. I wasn't sure how I felt about the clear sides. Typically, I think it would be nice to, you know, wear up a thing of gravel or even just put something black right there. But this is actually kind of nice. I think I like being able to see the moisture and what's going on there. So I'm going to leave that as it is. This should be pretty low maintenance. Once these ferns start growing, that will change everything. The heart ferns that could stay in here forever. The crocodile fern, those do get to be a pretty decent size. So at the very least, I need to come in and divide off of it. They form a nice rhizome. It's pretty easy to come in and snip it and pull those out. The maidenhair fern, that's this one back here. Beautiful ferns. I love a maidenhair fern. They don't love me unless they're in a terrarium or inside of like a bell, a glass bell or cloche. This is going to outgrow this, though, right? It only has a few inches up there, but this is removable. So I could, in theory, if I could remember what the heck this thing was called, then I could pop this piece of plexi out of here, buy another one, turn upside down and boom, it could just keep growing up there. Yeah, but I didn't set this up in enough of a permanent way. I think this whole thing, if I want it to be really, really long lasting, I should do a sealer of some kind in there. Because I saw some of those rust spots long term. That's not going to be great, right? No, it's not. But for now, it's awesome. I love it. Hey, thanks for hanging out. Pardon the... I don't know. I was going to say nonsense. It's not nonsense. It was just the thinking process, because I didn't plan out a video. I sat down and said, let's make a video. Sometimes that's just the way that goes. I am going to have these underneath my Berena grow lights over here on my shelf. Those run for 12 hours a day, I believe, is what I have them set for. Pretty sure it's 12 hours on and 12 hours off. And that's been great for my other terrariums over there. I think it'd be pretty good for these two. Hey, I hope everybody's doing well. What are some fun things you're doing with some of your terrariums, plants you like for your terrariums, experiences that you've had with some of these plants? I will say, and I should have said this before, this one may not thrive in here. They like it very moist and very humid. But I don't know about the airflow situation. We're going to find out. I think it will probably be fine. Microsorum, at least the aquatic kind. I know that I could put in here and grow it in a terrarium as long as it always stays nice and moist. But where's this one that's more of a terrestrial that might be able to grow in aquatically? Perhaps. Never tried it. Wouldn't shock me. It has the vitals of an aquatic plant, a plant that could at least be submerged at times like flood plains. Those sorts of things might not be enough for it. We'll see enough airflow that is. Yeah. Hey, hope everybody's doing well. Having a great day, a great life, and it's going absolutely beautiful for you. And of course, as always, and most importantly, everybody, keep on growing. Bye bye. Bye bye.