Making Terrariums in Jars

[scrubjayspeaks]

ysabetwordsmith has been posting about making terrariums and did a step-by-step of creating one in a spice jar. I was very inspired by this, and I wanted to take advantage of it being moss season here. In the spirit of spreading the inspiration, here's my process post too.



I have an empty spice jar, complete with the snap-on shaker top and a lid that doesn't actually belong to it. This one had a plastic-y sticker for the label, which came off easily and left a minimum of adhesive residue. Most of the spice jars I have used papery labels, which are always such a pain to clean off.



Using a small transplanting trowel, I gathered up materials from around the place. I got some soil from gopher mounds and some worm castings, as well as some soil from under leaf layers around the cottonwood trees. I got some whole, decaying leaves as well. I found sticks and bark with lichens, also from the cottonwoods. Then from around the horse corrals, where the fencing allows condensation to collect more consistently than we get rain, I got some pads of moss, as well as a couple of small, low-growing plants.

I assembled it on the top of the trash can. Conveniently located, tall enough to spare my back, close enough to flat for a working surface.



For the gravel drainage layer, I used some of the assorted top dressing I've saved from repotting succulents. (Also, just for my own idle amusement, I tossed in a few pearls of the hail that's still hanging around in the shady areas after the freak hailstorm we had this week.) I topped that with leaves to isolate it. For the soil layer, I used a thicker, less rotted stick to pack it down.

The gravel layer seemed very thin when I was making it, but the final assembly seems to have a much thicker gravel-dirt base layer than I was aiming for. Possibly I wasn't looking at it from the side as much as I should have, as opposed to from the top. It's a little hard to judge when working in a small container like this, but we'll call that a learning lesson.



Then I arranged the fancy bits: Some patches of moss and one of the tiny plants, gently pressed into the base materials. Then some bits of lichen branch, snapped down to size.



At this point, I realized I had gathered plenty more materials than I needed. Since that was the most time-consuming part (wow, a whole five minutes, probably XD), it seemed a shame not to make more use of them. So I tracked down another jar. Again, I didn't want to mess around with the paper labels, so I opted for a larger jam jar instead. It ended up with a lot of adhesive, though, so I scrubbed it down with a little 99% IPA to lift that. No shaker top, but oh well.

Same process here. I found some larger leaves to match the wider diameter, but other than that, it was all the same batch of materials. This one got the other small plant. I used the pruning shears to cut bits of the thicker stick for this one.



A passing inspection by the neighbor's cat! Must be on important cat business, since he didn't stop for scritches.



Back in the kitchen, here's a better view of the inside. I used a damp cotton bud to swab dirt smudges off the inside walls just to tidy things up. The lids are on loosely while I get a sense of how fast moisture dissipates. I put one in my bedroom and one in the office. Indirect light of varying degrees, so we'll see if one spot proves more favorable.

Comments

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

If you want height, look for cheap bottles of vinegar or olive oil. The better quality levels usually have a brown or green tint, but the cheap ones are almost always clear. These bottles are often relatively tall and narrow, sometimes square.