Watering Terrariums: Guide & Considerations
It’s the most common mistake a terrarium maker will experience at first. You’ll water your terrarium, wonder where all the water is and water again, only to find out over the next could of days all the water has started to cycle and you’ve put too much in.
We are going to talk about a couple of things to consider and look out for when it comes to the environment you’re about to create.
Putting water into a terrarium is easy. The hard part is making sure that you understand how much your terrarium needs. We have to note that a lot of house plants around the home die as a result of too much water. So a good amount of water at the beginning is a conservative amount that tapers up as needed. If too much water has been placed inside your terrarium, there’s a good chance you will not be able to tip it out. After watering, give it about a day to start showing the water cycle inside the terrarium. After waiting and observing, you should have an indicator of if you need more water or if you should keep the lid off for a while to allow some water to work its way out.
A simple terrarium showcasing a false bottom made of decorative stone
Preventing Overwatering:
Your terrarium should include a false bottom made of small pebbles, stones or sand that will show your sitting water level at the base of your terrarium and also be a visual representation of how much your terrarium is holding at once.
A false bottom is a necessity as it separates the soil and the water and avoids the soil becoming waterlogged. What also needs to be stressed is a deep, consistent false bottom that has no unbroken line of soil moving through the gaps of the false bottom. This is due to the fact that water moves upwards via capillary action, treating the soil as a bridge to easily move upwards. This capillary action is natural and will make your false bottom redundant if not done properly.
If your plants get waterlogged, there is also a chance that they will be under attack from root rot. Root rot is not actually the rotting of roots but is a fungus that completely encases the roots, suffocating and killing your plant. Root rot may be preventable by the use of springtails as they will aerate around the roots while also eating the fungus as it arrives. But these methods of prevention are more useful if you are mindful of your watering in the first place. An aggressive amount of water may make too much work for your springtails or even worse, the water level will be so high they will be unable to penetrate the soil below the water level anymore.
Before completely sealing the terrarium for good, we would recommend slowly acclimating the materials inside your terrarium by partially removing the lid periodically. This allows all of the content of your terrarium to process through all of this starting volatility in a fresh, breathable environment. This technique also allows you to take some time to gauge how much water your terrarium can hold at once and let it escape through the top if you have overwatered.
Identifying Overwatering:
If you are wondering if your terrarium is currently over-watered, take a look at the edges of the terrarium at how much water has been collected on the sides. If there is an excessive amount of water consisting of large beads, you may benefit from wiping those beads off the edges with something absorbent. This can be repeated daily until you’ve achieved a balanced amount of water. Be mindful of the fact that terrariums will also collect water on the side facing away from heat. If you have a terrarium on your kitchen window sill for example, you may have less visibility from the front as the sun is keeping the window side warm. If this is a problem for you, you may want to reposition your terrarium or have a more even distribution of temperature in your home, possibly a light illuminating the front. This will not only stop water from collecting on the visible side, but may bring better visuals to your terrarium.
After a terrarium has been established and all of the mould and its natural contents have been worked through, watering can be higher without any adverse effects apart from water-logging. A closed terrarium will rarely need topping up if sealed well.
And always remember!, make sure that if you have moss in your terrarium, use only distilled water or rain water as the chemicals in tap water can harm and discolour moss.
Avoiding Fertilizer:
Fertilizer is great in general gardening, but there are some reasons why you would avoid fertilizer in a terrarium. One of the reasons is that high concentrations of nutrients may overwhelm and damage moss inside of a terrarium. Due to their inability to extract moisture out of the ground via a root system, the leaves take in all of the light and water needed to survive.
When it comes to general plant life however, fertilizer may work too well for your terrarium plants!
Owning a terrarium becomes too much work with overly successful plants, especially if you have many plants packed together at once. I see many terrariums that consist of 10 plants or more and they would be a nightmare to keep maintained. This is why sometimes it’s best to leave the plants as they are and only intervene if a problem occurs. This is especially important to follow if you have a terrarium that is hard to access after finishing whether it be a very large piece of glass or a very small opening at the top.
These reasons are why i would always suggest understanding the growth pattern of the plants you place in your terrarium. A syngonium has a beautiful funnel shaped growth pattern that thickens over time whereas the plant baby tears has the potential to grow sideways and consume your creation. The key to an enclosed ecosystem is to understand what you’d like to make while also understanding what nature wants to be.
