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Although we grow all our warm orchids indoors and grow in IKEA cabinets with added growlights, we haven't grown in a terrarium before. For our first terrarium we decided to go for warm growing miniature orchids that we are confident will enjoy life in our south facing dining room. We have avoided any orchids that will grow large or have long flower spikes as we want the terrarium to develop over the next five to ten years without needing any major interventions.
We purchased a second hand terrarium and started by making a back wall of raw cork bark. We cut out a card the same size as the terrarium and used this to lay out bark and stick it together to make one piece with a glue gun.
Next we positionedfive of the orchids on the cork and drilled holes to fix them on with a single twist of green wire.
The bark was then positioned at the back of the terrarium and a couple of blobs of glue hold it secure and upright. The next job id to find small branched to fill the rest of the terrarium. We are using fresh branches from the Elder tree in our garden. We have tried lots of native tree branches and found Elder and Gorse to be the best as they keep their bark for many years and do not have tannins like oak which are toxic to orchid roots.
We found three branch bits we liked and added small marine ply bases to make them self supporting. Next we drilled two holes for each mini orchid and twisted the wire on the back of the brance to hold the plant securely.
With orchids fixed to each branch we just had to arrange them in the terrarium and add some course orchid back in the bottom to cover the base of the branches and give a natural look
All finished. We will spray daily with rainwater and feed at about 400-500 microseimens. The terrarium is in a warm bright room near our south facing bifold doors. We are adding supplementary lighting from a small LED growlight set at 12 hour days at the moment but expect to turn this off in the summer.
We will add photos here to show how the plants develop over the next few years, watch this space.
Planting list.
Back of the terrarium - Clockwise from bottom left: Tolumnia velutina, Bulbophyllum lasiochilum, Bulbophyllum mirrum, Bulbophyllum ventriculare, Aerangis fastuosa.
Branches: Left - Dendrobium loddigesii, Centre - Macroclinium lineare, Schoenorchis fragrans, Bulbophyllum alkmarrensis, Bulbophyllum frostii, Dendrobium tsangianum, Right - Epidendrum peperomia
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