DON'T Buy A Terrarium - Make Your Own!

hey guys welcome back to the channel so in today's episode i'm going to be showing you how you can build an open terrarium with just a glass bowl such as this some dirt some stones and a few plants so i recently went to my local nursery and i saw that they were selling terrariums for 50 pounds 60 pounds up to 100 pounds so i thought i might as well make one myself seems a bit more fun to do it that way so that's what i'm doing this video so there's a few bits that you need to build your open terrarium i'm going to show you everything you need the full process so let's get to it okay then guys so an open terrarium is basically a curated bowl of decorative plants so there's a few things you need to achieve that obviously you need a nice vessel of some description needs to be clear so you can see through it that's the whole point of it i've got some perlite here as a layer for my soil i've got some stones for decoration i've got some just standard potting soil some rooting hormones i'm going to be taking some cuttings of these plants i'm going to be using cuttings in here so i've got a selection of plants over there i'll show you what those are in a second and then i've got some interesting bits of bark here as as decoration so i'm not sure i'm going to use that yet but we'll see that together so when you're making an open terrarium you want to select some plants like i have that have the same care requirements and kind of grow at the same speed and also slow growing so what i've got here is a fertonia and the couple of begonias and also in this jar i've got some i've got a peperomia santorini that i've been propagating i think it's just starting to develop some roots i'm going to pop that in there so i've got a selection of plants contrasting colors as you'll see so it gives a bit of interest to the terrarium i'm using perlite because it's as well as a useful potting medium it's decorative because it's white so it'll contrast nicely with the potting soil so the first thing that we need to do is to sort out our layers of soil so what we're going to do just put these plants to one side for the sake just to create some room so what you want to do you want a layer of soil or potting medium about one third of the way up the the vessel so what i'm going to start doing is taking some nice pebbles that have here some nice stones and just layering a few of these at the bottom here so you'll be able to see these through the grass at the bottom that just adds a little bit of interest not too many just a few just around the edge where you can see it a couple of smaller ones there okay so that's my base layer i guess and then to that my bottom layer is going to be perlite so i'm just going to scatter that at the bottom [Music] so the good thing about using perlite is that it is a medium that plants will grow in so i've got two layers compost and perlite so the plant's roots will develop and grow into both layers so i'm just using perlite as a kind of interest factor it's a really nice white color obviously so that's my perlite done now i'm going to grab my soil so this is just compost my usual potting soil that i use for my house plant so there's already a bit of perlite in here but it's essentially just compost with perlite so i'm just gonna carefully spoon this on top i'm about halfway up there i guess already looking quite nice nice contrast with the white and the dark soil so what we're going to do i'm just going to set this to one side for the time being just at the back there now we're going to bring in my plants so what i'm going to do i'm going to make some cuttings so that's free from my fittonia so i'll just cut it at the just underneath the leaf node that one do you think yeah just underneath a leaf node so that's another one put that to one side now and in this plant another begonia i'm just going to take a couple of cuttings from this snip that off there maybe four of these cuttings i'll take so that's four of those i can put that to one side now so these pepperoni is in here these are from my video that i did how to propagate peperomia santorini so these have been in here a few weeks so there you can see starting to develop some roots on the end of that stem so i can use that for this terrarium a few more on that one so i've got three cuttings of peperomia that'll look really nice in this terrarium and i'll put that back on the shelf hopefully it'll develop roots okie dokie so let's bring this back into frame so these are prepped i'm just going to prep these other cuttings now so you just want to just trim just underneath a leaf node this is where the roots are going to develop so we want to discard that leaf and that leaf because otherwise if you stick that in they'll just rot same with this one i'll just trim it so it's closer to that leaf node so the roots come out just discard those two bottom leaves take that off like so so as you can see i've chosen some plants that are contrasting in kind of color and texture that's what you want really you want a terrarium with lots of interest there you have it there's another cutting so that's my selection of cuttings let's just move them to one side bring in my terrarium so what we need to do now is arrange them nicely in here in a nice fashion so i'm probably going to group the sets of plants together so i'll go for in that corner there and i'll plant it like so so that's one do this next to it that's two so i'm going to move on to another type of plant now because i don't want it to be too crowded with one type so pop that one in this one next to it and that one just in there i reckon so you don't want to crowd it too much because they are little cuttings that have yet to develop roots and they will grow bigger so there will come a time where you'll need to probably prune so not a bad start so far should i put a little bit of driftwood in there just to make it a bit interesting just get that going put that up against that one and it's quite nice put that one up against there so that plant that begonia should grow nicely over that bit of driftwood it's a bit of bark from the uh from the garden really it's not really driftwood this one now i would like to go up against the other end of that driftwood so there's a little gap there look quite nice have it pointing that way this other piece next to it this other smaller one here just realized that i forgot to dip these cuttings into my rooting powder never mind they should still develop roots i'm just using my chopstick to get the dirt off of that plant and then i think i'm just gonna stick that one in there yeah let's do that one in there next to that looking quite nice what does it need it needs a few stones i reckon i'll bring them in let's choose a nice couple of stones that one's got a nice color to it where should we put that let's put that just there on the end and we'll have that leaf just draping over that stone if i can just pull it out a little bit so hopefully you can see that go for a larger stone like that one again just have that slightly draping over i might go for another little bit of driftwood just there in that corner so you can always play around if you're not happy with how it looks you can always take things out rearrange them as you go this is not set in stone so i think we need something to complement that do a couple of stones so i would like another bit of driftwood just behind that plants not put my pepperonis in yet i wish i'll put those just there at the end there you are i want it to hide anything so i might just yeah yeah that's better maybe just facing the other way as well i think that would look quite nice i'll just bring this up like so anything i want to do i think there's a bit of a gap in there you can fill with some stones underneath that leaf what do you think guys is that nice looks like it's got a good shape to it nice contrast to colors and patterns so i've got my fittonia there my two begonias and my peperomia so all these will grow relatively slowly quite nicely together i think so next step i think is to just tidy the sides of this bowl i've got a paint brush here the inside of this bowl has just accumulated some dust from the mainly the perlites i'm just going to give it a wipe down and there you have it nice and clean so all that's left to do now is just to water these plants i've got my spray bottle in here i'm just going to give it a light spray over the top moisten the soil underneath spraying it off in this way kind of dislodges any dirt on the leaves as well okay i've finished spraying it so i'm just going to dry the excess around the inside of the pot just i don't want to leave any water marks want it to be nice and pristine and i think i'm done and that looks really nice really happy with how that's turned out got a nice layer of pearlite and soil got some stones at the bottom just add a bit of interest and then i've got a nice selection of small slow growing plants with some bark to act as driftwood and some nice decorative stones so the plants i've got in here got a fertonia there a couple of begonias and a peperomia santorini that are rooting so these are unrooted cuttings they should root in here successfully i'll keep my eye on it i'll top it up with my spray bottle when it starts to dry out i'll locate it in a nice bright spot for it to do for it to develop roots so i'm expecting this peperomia to start to grow taller it needs to remain quite shallow in the bowl so be a nice contrast in height and also in texture as well so really happy with how this is how this has gone on so i'm sure you'll agree there guys this is a really easy process to create your own open terrarium so like i said i saw these in the shops for about 50 north of 50 pounds they're really quite expensive for what they are i think but really easy to create so why not have a go at home yourself let me know in the comments if you have created your own open terrarium and let me know how you're getting on with yours if you like the video then please do give it a thumbs up really helps the channel grow in a few weeks i'll probably be making a closed variety of this a closed terrarium so subscribe to the channel if you if you want to be notified when that video comes out thanks for watching as always and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Sheffield Made Plants

Views: 27,101

Keywords: Terrarium, Open terrarium, How to make a terrarium, Closed terrarium, Houseplants, Indoor plants

Id: FJw9pxIMWSE

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2022