 Hey everyone and welcome back to episode 3 of How To Terrarium. In this episode I will teach you how to make a terrarium using materials exclusively found in an area near you. In other words, a native terrarium. That being said, your terrarium will be totally unique to the area where you live. This type of terrarium is nearly free to make. All that you have to purchase is a container and some mesh. Unless you have spare materials, then this project shouldn't cost you a penny. Keep in mind that I live in western Pennsylvania. The plants in my location could be much different than yours. Don't hesitate to experiment with different plants and see how they adapt to a terrarium like environment prior to making your final enclosure. To do so, simply use all jars for individual plants and let them sit for a few days. Don't get discouraged if your terrarium doesn't work out the first time. After all, you can simply go back into the woods and obtain more materials and repeat the process with no cost to you at all. Plus, who wouldn't want to go exploring and build another terrarium? To build this terrarium, we mainly need items to gather our materials with. You will need things like plastic ziplock bags. I used the large ones to collect soil and stones and the small ones for plants. I found that ziplock bags and topware containers work well for collecting plants because they keep them from drying out. You will notice that if you leave your plants in a bag for an extended amount of time, they will begin to condensate. In other words, the moisture already present will help preserve the plant. If you're concerned that your plants will dry out, you could also take a squirrel bottle and miss them just after harvesting. You will also likely need a few topware containers. I like these ones because they have compartments to section off very specimens from each other. You also may need a small garbage bag, a paper bag, and a backpack of some sort. The garbage bag is for anything large that we may find such as sticks. I personally like to use paper bags for bark and to examples, and obviously you need a backpack to carry all of these in. Optionally, you can take a spoon and a shovel to dig out plants if necessary. You also need a container of sorts, as long as it holds moisture you are in business. I personally prefer glass containers, but you can use whatever you can get your hands on. Also, you will need some fine mesh. Similar to what is used in a window screen, if necessary, you could also use weed blocker. Now, let's go exploring. When looking for soil to put in your terrarium, I find that the best stuff is off the trail underneath the leaves. See how it just kind of crumbles and it has a lot of different things in it? Dead leaves, little twigs, pieces of bark. That's what we're looking for. A nice mix, not just dirt. So what we're going to do is get our ziplock bag and we're going to fill it up with some dirt. If necessary, you can get soil from multiple places and mix it together. The cool thing about getting soil like this is that its composition is totally unique to the area where it's from. As usual, we're going to make ourself a false spot. So I found some rocks here that we can use to do that. When making my planet selections, I usually begin with moss. I like to take specimens that are growing in a more spot so that they adapt to a terrarium environment faster. As you can see, I chose a variety of types. All unique in color and texture. A good variety will help your terrarium stand out and look more natural. When choosing your plants, you want to make sure that you're not taking the large plant like a bush or a tree. A good role of thumb is to look at the plants nearby and see if there's anything like what you're about to harvest. If you see anything similar that is much larger, leave it be. In worst case, you either choose something that needs to be perund occasionally or remove it later down the line. I try to find a good mixture of plants that vary in size, texture and leaf style. This will make your terrarium look unique and natural due to the variety of texture. Finally, you could use a shovel or spoon to dig out your plants, but I prefer to use my fingers as I like to feel for the base of the plant. Plus, most of these plants don't have deep root structures. As you're collecting your plants, also look for twigs and other items that will add a nice touch to your terrarium. For example, I got a few twigs and eight corncaps. Choosing the right bark and wood is pretty easy. As long as it's not rotting, you're pretty much in business. If it is soggy or easy to break apart, leave it be. The best candidates are dry, yet hard at the same time. This usually happens in areas where there's a lot of sunlight or that are very dry. I suggest not taking logs that are riddled with mold or mushrooms as well. Although these will pop up eventually, you don't want your terrarium to get invested from the cacco. Alright, so now we're back. And before we start doing our terrarium, I just want to go for everything that we got. As you can see, I got a really nice selection of plants as I was looking. I found a lot of different types of mosses, some liverboard, lichen, little ferns, some grasses, all kinds of different stuff. Here's a selection of logs and bark and other accessories that I found as I was looking. As you can see that log that I harvested, I cut it because there was no way it was going to fit in the terrarium as is. This is a really great piece. It's pretty gnarly. It has a lot of different roots and things coming off of it, so it will make a really interesting piece. Here's a bark, which I have an idea of what I'm going to do with this in your sea once we start going. And I got a lot of kinds of different little accessories, acorn caps. If you're going to use these, make sure it doesn't have the acorn in it anymore. Otherwise, you're going to end up with a tree, different sticks, dry vines, and other miscellaneous pieces. Finally, here's the soil and the rocks that we obtained. As I expressed earlier, whenever you're picking your soil, make sure that it's not mud or just totally dirt. This is a good blended as sticks, leaves, soil, all kinds of different stuff in it, so we'll make a great terrarium mix. Much like the tropical soil that we make, it has to be a nice blend, so that way there's good drainage, retains moisture, all that good stuff. And we got our rocks, which these are larger than what I would typically use for a false bottom, but as the nature of this terrarium, we want to get everything from a local source, and this is what I could find, so let's get started. To begin, as always, we're going to start with our false bottom. Follow the link on the screen if you want to know more about this process. As you can see here, I have some screen cut out to the correct size, and all that we're going to do is add our rocks, put the screen over top of it, and then add the soil on top of that. Now we have our false bottom and soil in place. I always like to begin by adding the largest piece first, which is typically the driftwood. I'm not sure, I'm going to have to break some of it off to get it to fit in here. Whenever I plan my terrariums, I like to begin with a background and work my way to the foreground. That's what you see me doing here. Keep in mind that you will only typically see one side of your terrarium. I always keep my terrariums facing the same direction, and I suggest you do the same. That's not to say that you should only make one side look good, but that you should try to create a defined landscape. Don't overthink this though, oftentimes simple is better. Also, don't be afraid to trim plants before you place them into your container. This will help stimulate new growth and make your job a little bit easier. Throughout this process, keep in mind that our goal is to create a natural looking composition that will provide years of enjoyment. As you can see, I use various tools and my hands to plant. You can use anything you want. Just be patient and take your time. My hands are relatively large, and I work around a small container pretty well. You can surely do the same. Finally, move things around if you're not happy with your current composition. Doing so won't sure that you end up with something that you can truly appreciate. So now we go to our plant that I think this one turned out pretty good, and to finish it off, we're just going to add final touches. To complete our terrarium we are going to mist it. You should rarely have to water your terrarium after the first mist, if at all. I always water moss more than the rest of the container as they grow better in moist conditions. I will also occasionally open my terrarium to water the moss as needed. If your terrarium remains condensated for a long amount of time, you've overwatered it. To combat this issue, simply wipe the condensation with a paper towel each day until the problem ceases. If you see no condensation in the morning or evening hours, you've underwatered your terrarium. Add more as needed. The more terrariums you make, the better you can calculate the proper amount of water.