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ysabetwordsmithToday I added some dead wood and leaf litter to the antique jar terrarium. Regrettably I was not able to collect microfauna as I had hoped, due to howling wind, so that will have to wait for later. See Part 1: Washing, Drainage, and Barrier, Part 2: Mixing Substrate, Part 3: Adding Mosses, Part 4: Dead Wood and Leaf Litter.
This is the starting point for the antique jar terrarium. It's roughly a side view to show the part of the glass with the most snail trails. There are multiple snails ranging from tiny to so minute I can hardly see them. Illinois has about 124 species of land snails. These seem to have roughly cone-shaped shells.
Some people really hate snails. This makes more sense if you're growing expensive plants and animals. In this case, I'm growing moss from my yard, which typically does fine with local microfauna. Also, snails like to crawl on glass and lick off algae. It's fun to see the little squiggly trails they leave in the condensation. If the snails grow too numerous, I can always remove some of them. Meanwhile they're a sign of an active ecosystem. I've also seen some sort of tiny white worm and a minute millipede. I never know what will come crawling out of the substrate, which is part of the fun.
This back view shows the patch of bare substrate. It allows me to add things that the moss wouldn't enjoy being underneath.
For this step, I collected three pieces of wood. From left to right I have a piece of soft, wet, rotten wood; a piece of dry, hard, dead wood; and a piece of fresh, green, live wood. You can't see much of scale here, but they're about thumb size. Adding these will give detritivores a choice of food and shelter for quite a while, so the substrate won't need refreshing soon. Deadwood is an essential part of the forest system.
It would've been easier to add these earlier, but the spring weather has not exactly been cooperating. The rotten wood is likely hackberry, the dry wood may be maple, and the fresh is wild cherry. Remember, in permaculture, anything you need in the present moment constitutes "a yield." My yard is rich enough to have an abundance of materials that I can forage at will without wrecking the balance.
This type of leaf litter is dead and dry. It consists of fragments from different leaf types such as sycamore, maple, elm, hackberry, and mulberry. It breaks down fairly fast, especially if you have plenty of detritivores, so it will need to be replenished periodically. Note that if you don't have natural dead leaves available when you need a few, then you can pick fresh green leaves and let them dry until crispy.
Using the bent-tip tweezers and the narrow spatula, I gently peeled back the central moss carpet and dug a small hole. It was a bit tricky because this moss has a lacy texture and wanted to entangle with the tweezers. Then I pushed the pieces of wood into the substrate.
I scraped the substrate over the wood to cover the pieces, then unfolded the central carpet of moss to cover most of the substrate.
I used the bent-tip tweezers to place the leaf litter over the bare substrate. This was somewhat tedious because I could only move a small tuft at a time, but I got the job done. Pay attention to the sense of scale. Here the moss is meant to look like hilly landscape, so breaking up the leaves helps to preserve that scale. In a large terrarium, you might want to leave some whole.
This is the back view of the terrarium after today's work.
This is a front view of the terrarium after today's work.
This is the starting point for the antique jar terrarium. It's roughly a side view to show the part of the glass with the most snail trails. There are multiple snails ranging from tiny to so minute I can hardly see them. Illinois has about 124 species of land snails. These seem to have roughly cone-shaped shells.
Some people really hate snails. This makes more sense if you're growing expensive plants and animals. In this case, I'm growing moss from my yard, which typically does fine with local microfauna. Also, snails like to crawl on glass and lick off algae. It's fun to see the little squiggly trails they leave in the condensation. If the snails grow too numerous, I can always remove some of them. Meanwhile they're a sign of an active ecosystem. I've also seen some sort of tiny white worm and a minute millipede. I never know what will come crawling out of the substrate, which is part of the fun.
This back view shows the patch of bare substrate. It allows me to add things that the moss wouldn't enjoy being underneath.
For this step, I collected three pieces of wood. From left to right I have a piece of soft, wet, rotten wood; a piece of dry, hard, dead wood; and a piece of fresh, green, live wood. You can't see much of scale here, but they're about thumb size. Adding these will give detritivores a choice of food and shelter for quite a while, so the substrate won't need refreshing soon. Deadwood is an essential part of the forest system.
It would've been easier to add these earlier, but the spring weather has not exactly been cooperating. The rotten wood is likely hackberry, the dry wood may be maple, and the fresh is wild cherry. Remember, in permaculture, anything you need in the present moment constitutes "a yield." My yard is rich enough to have an abundance of materials that I can forage at will without wrecking the balance.
This type of leaf litter is dead and dry. It consists of fragments from different leaf types such as sycamore, maple, elm, hackberry, and mulberry. It breaks down fairly fast, especially if you have plenty of detritivores, so it will need to be replenished periodically. Note that if you don't have natural dead leaves available when you need a few, then you can pick fresh green leaves and let them dry until crispy.
Using the bent-tip tweezers and the narrow spatula, I gently peeled back the central moss carpet and dug a small hole. It was a bit tricky because this moss has a lacy texture and wanted to entangle with the tweezers. Then I pushed the pieces of wood into the substrate.
I scraped the substrate over the wood to cover the pieces, then unfolded the central carpet of moss to cover most of the substrate.
I used the bent-tip tweezers to place the leaf litter over the bare substrate. This was somewhat tedious because I could only move a small tuft at a time, but I got the job done. Pay attention to the sense of scale. Here the moss is meant to look like hilly landscape, so breaking up the leaves helps to preserve that scale. In a large terrarium, you might want to leave some whole.
This is the back view of the terrarium after today's work.
This is a front view of the terrarium after today's work.
