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HOW TO GROW INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS
IN A TERRARIUM |
Growing Insectivorous Plants in
a Terrarium.
You may not have garden or have room on the windowsill to grow
theses great plants, so a terrarium can be ideal for you.
A terrarium is an glass container that is normally a fish tank
or bowl. If you are to use an old fish tank please clean out
good to make sure that there is no chemicals from the fish water
or if salt tropical fish tank clean out well, as your plants
will die or become very ill looking.
The fish tank is best as you can just have sheet of glass over
the top to keep the humidity high and these means you will not
have collect so much rainwater which is the best water for all
of these great plants. If the tank is new or it just came with
hood with lighting holders the better as you will need extra
lighting as house or flat rooms will not have enough light for
these plants. or if you put it right near to a south facing
window you may get away without lighting.
You will have get hold of lights that are for growing plants
which are normally easy to get hold from your garden centre or
some fish place may also have them. You may also find them on
the Internet also. Or if you belong to a society someone may
know of a cheap way to get hold of this type of lights.
You must make sure that when you put the plants into the
terrarium that the lights are not to near to the growth as the
heat from the bulbs will burn it, but at the same time you will
have to make sure that the smaller plants are not to far from
the lighting as they will grow lanky and any colour that in
normal in the plant will go.
There are may books which will give you more details about the
lighting, but I like A. Slacks book growing carnivorous plants
which does have some details about this type of growing.
You have choice of ways to plant your terrarium.
1 ) Just fill two inches of rain water and put pots
of your plants. remember to put larger pots to back as you will
normally have the tank against the wall in your home, to give
full view of the smaller potted plants. You can put some perlite
with some moss with the water and this will tell you if thinks
are OK as if the moss become to leggy or just not growing well
then you can look at the lighting and spacing of your plants.
Most people that wish to grow Nepenthes and other more tropical
types of insectivorous plants use this way as they can trim
these plants easy as they are in pots. as these plants grow
faster then cooler growing plants. Some use the pond plants
baskets for growing nepenthes as they need an open and free
draining soil like prelite, moss and coarse orchid bark mixed.
2 ) You can put soil into the base and make
landscape with the soil and plant it up to show all the plants
to there best. you will still need lighting as talked about
above.
Now you will need to make sure that the soil does not dry out
and to do this I have put a layer of about two inches of perlite
with so charcoal which help to keep the smell down from this
damp soil. the charcoal should be the type that is used in fish
tank filters as this as been made sure to be pure.
The soil place on top can be a mix of number of type as put on
this site and it will depend on which type of plants you are
going to grow. remember that making small hills and dips in the
top of the soil will give more area to grow more plants and also
give dryer and wetter places for the different needs of some
plants.
I have also done this type landscaping on my outside bog garden
to give the same wetter and dryer place with more area to plant
up so a bog garden does not have to big to grow so many types of
plants.
You may be need to heat the tank up for so plants and this can
be done by a few ways.
A ) Put an container of water into the tank and put a
fish tank *heater into it, which will heat up the water which
will add heat to the closed tank.
B ) You can put *heating wire which is used in greenhouse
to heat the soil.
C ) There are seed *heater mats which are around and
could be used maybe.
Remember that the lighting will give of heat and you will need
work this out to the size of the tank,
*( But make sure you have a power cut off plug with any of
the above use of electric as water and power does not mixed well.)
Remember that some of these plants need to have a
cooler time for a winter. so you could open the top fully to
allow the tank cool down. you could make some ice cubes from
rain water and use this in any water you use or just put a
container in the tank of this ice and it will take heat out of
the tank.
Like plants in a cold frames and greenhouses moss will grow
well, so you will need to make sure that smaller plants in your
terrarium are over grown.
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