How to Create a Closed Native Terrarium | Ecosystem in a Jar

[Music] hello and welcome to natural world facts today i'm here in a woodland and i'm going to be showing you how to create a closed terrarium [Music] [Applause] a terrarium is a sealed ecosystem in a jar which if done properly can be almost entirely self-sustaining with its own nutrient and water cycles as the plants water themselves through transpiration and condensation it works from the warmth of the sun causing moisture to evaporate from the plants and soil which then condenses on the cooler glass surfaces of the inside of the container just like rain the water drips back down into the soil and the process starts over at the same time the soil layer provides the plants with nutrients and those nutrients are replenished as the plants die and decompose back into the soil giving new life before you set out to find materials you will need a large clear jar with an airtight lid and optionally a sheet of mesh or any kind of porous material to separate the soil from the stone layer later on once you have a jar set out into your local park woods or your back garden with some containers to collect the rest of the materials you will need to gather a few handfuls of small stones or pebbles and enough soil to provide a soil layer a few inches thick now you can search for plants you may want to use moss works great as it loves damp conditions and can look stunning in a terrarium otherwise look for grasses and small plants such as weeds that don't grow too large when collecting moss be sure to only take small amounts where possible as moss takes a very long time to grow and provides vital habitats for wildlife the best way to gather moss is to take it from the center of a patch rather than the edges and then to brush the moss around the gap inwards to provide cover for any insects [Music] if you come across any isopods or wood lice keep these for later as they will act as a cleanup crew in your terrarium breaking down dead organic matter and preventing the growth of mold which can kill your plants all right now i've gathered everything that i'm gonna need to make this i have my glass jar with a lid i have my stones and my moss and plants and any nice bits of wood that i found that i thought would make a nice hardscape and i have a little box of wood lice and they will be the cleanup crew cleaning up any decaying wood or dead plants the first step will be to place a layer of rocks or small pebbles at the bottom of the glass jar and what this does is it creates a false bottom or a drainage layer so that when the water filters through the soil from the plants it doesn't sit in the soil among the roots and cause rot instead it will sit in the gaps between these rocks preventing any mold from forming now that i have my false bottom in place my layer of stones at the bottom i would usually put in a layer of mesh or some kind of permeable surface so that the water can soak through but it still separates the sediment from the rocks however i don't have any of that with me so i'm just going to put the sediment layer on top of the rocks and hope that not too much of it falls through into this false bottom for sediment i'll just be using the soil that's readily available here in this forest as it's very rich in nutrients as you can see because of all the leaves and dead matter that falls from above and decays giving its nutrients to the soil it's also full of worms which is great for a terrarium as it will add even more nutrients to the setup i'm gonna get a nice layer of soil in there and to compact it down to the bottom there i'll be using this blunt stick just like this now that i have a soil layer which is just a few inches thick above the false bottom we can start adding the plants i've collected quite a nice array of plants and hardscape here to put into my terrarium i've got some fungi some mushrooms that i found i have some old decaying wood and of course i have the moss that i collected i also gathered this nice hard bit of wood from the forest floor i'm going to break this down to a smaller piece that will fit in here and then i'll start putting the plants in around it i found this nice piece here which is attached to some hardwood i think this would go very nicely i have quite a large piece of moss here that i pulled from the base of a tree so i'm just going to separate this into smaller pieces it'll be much easier to work with just press it down into the soil into the substrate like so i'm going foraging for some nice little plants here that will go well alongside the moss you don't want to choose anything that can grow too big so nothing like these ferns around here and definitely not saplings but grasses are excellent as they provide ground cover and they'll really they'll grow in really well and fill up any uncovered areas of sediment i just want to maneuver that into position and get a nice long stick whatever you have available and press it down press the roots down into the soil as deep and as firm as possible i've gone with quite a simple design i've just got a little bit of wood a few mosses one fungus and some grass and i think that will do nicely for this one but of course if you've got more plants around or you've got more choices um for things that you can put in or small plants weeds do very well in there then by all means put them in but i'm going to go with this i'd say this is done the next step is to add some water it's best to do it from a spray bottle but i don't have one with me so it's also okay to do this make sure everything is nice and watered you also don't want to over water it because when you put the lid on and seal it that water isn't going to be able to escape and too much water can cause the plants to die and mold to form and you don't want that before we put the lid on i'm going to do one last thing i'm going to get the tub which is full of the isopods or the wood lice that i collected and i'm going to get them out just place them into the terrarium because it's inevitable that some of the plants you put in won't adapt well to this kind of an environment what the woodlice will do is they will break down any of the dead plant matter in any decaying wood and stop mold growth now that we've added the false bottom the sediment layer the plant layer the hardscape the isopods and giving it a good watering it's time to put the lid on and this is a closed terrarium in a jar a self-sustaining ecosystem that you can put on your windowsill and enjoy [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Natural World Facts

Views: 1,515,076

Keywords: closed terrarium, bottle garden, terrarium, native terrarium, diy, plants, make a terrarium, planted, ecosphere, ecosystem, native, how to make a terrarium, diy terrarium, diy closed terrarium, closed terrarium ecosystem, closed terrarium build, closed terrarium diy, serpadesign, eternal terrarium, how to terrarium, forest floor terrarium, invertebrate terrarium, self sustaining ecosystem, jar ecosystem, building terrarium, terrarium tutorial, insect terrarium, woodland terrarium

Id: y0u9k-MSo8U

Length: 9min 15sec (555 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020