A new terrarium

I love terrariums…and I love thrift store shopping. So this post is about the best of both! I found a glass globe, at the St. Louis Teachers' Reusable Resource Center in the Chesterfield Mall.  This was my second trip to the store, the first one I bought 10# of different items, including things like wine corks, stickers, contact paper, assorted glass jars, some beakers and test tubes in ALL sizes, some lace, some fabric.  All sorts of different things!

All this stuff is donated and kept out of the landfills, so it’s really a great concept…you don’t have to be a teacher to shop there. So anyway, back to my terrarium story.  I stopped last weekend to just check out the store for my second time on my way home from Mom’s house.  I spotted some new lab donated glass flasks and globes.  Big giant globes. 

Here is the one I bought, it weighed 7# so it costed $7…it came with this really tiny plastic base that it sits on.  I didn’t like the plastic look so much.

I cut a base out of wood that I had on hand, painted it bright green and it looks really neat.  I thought I did a pretty good job with my simple tools.

I was scared the globe would get cracked or broken so I kept it in a square laundry basket while I planted the terrarium.  I started with some marbles and some rocks, then added some activated charcoal to the bottom (like the kind you buy for aquariums). 

The charcoal is something I always use, I understand it is really only needed for closed terrariums but I always add to any terrarium I create whether the top if open or not.

I use 1/4 peat moss and 3/4 potting soil for my dirt, grabbed a few plants from my existing container pots on the deck since they would soon be frostbitten and die anyway. 

I added a few inches of dirt and then arranged the plants like I wanted them.  I have two ferns, some mounding moss and some creeping jenny in there.  Probably a bit too many plants but I can always trim them or pull them out later.

I added some polished rocks and put some more dirt around the plants, watered it all well and it was done!

I also added a water globe inside, but didn’t put any water inside. I just added it for some color.

Here it is in the jungle of the houseplants I brought in from the deck before the frost.

I might be linking to these parties!