The florarium, or a garden in a bottle, is a stylish and original interior decoration. They can decorate both an apartment and an office space. This is a real mini-garden, a composition created from living plants.
The choice of capacity for the device florarium
Choose a suitable container for your florarium. Any clear glass vessel will do. This can be a round aquarium, a large glass, a vase, an ordinary jar or bottle. Before starting to create a mini-garden, you need to clean the container. Wash it thoroughly with baking soda and rinse it several times under running water.
Planting substrate
Take care of the soil for planting plants. Place drainage on the bottom of the container. This is necessary because glass containers do not have a hole for water drainage. Use a layer of clean pebbles for drainage, on top of which sprinkle coarse river sand. It can be mixed with hydrogel or perlite, which in turn will retain moisture. If you are going to plant the plants in a bottle with a narrow neck, then pour the drainage into the container through the funnel.
Prepare the substrate. It should be loose and low in nutrition. Succulent soil is suitable for this purpose. Its amount depends on the size of the root system of the plants that you will plant in the florarium. Usually the layer does not exceed 1/3 of the total volume of the container.
Features of the selection and planting of plants
Pick up plants for your florarium. So that they do not crowd out each other, choose slow-growing specimens: succulents, cacti. They will also decorate the composition of the baby-fittonia, ivy, mecolic pileae. Plant one plant, which will serve as the center of the composition, and place the rest around it.
Use a stick to make a hole in the ground. Using tweezers, lower the rooted stalk or small rosette into the container and sprinkle the soil over the roots. Cover with sphagnum moss. Put unusual driftwood, decorate the surface with shells and sand, achieving a harmonious composition.
Floriana care
Place the composition in a well-lit place, but try to protect the plants from direct sunlight, as they can simply burn out in a glass container.
Regularly remove excess shoots that thicken the planting. Remove dead leaves and shoots. For this procedure, you will need a blade that you attach to a stick, such a tool will make it easier to trim. You can use a crochet hook to remove leaves and shoots from the bottle.
Water as the soil dries out. It is more convenient to do this using a special groove. Cut a strip of metal sheet and fold it in half. Substitute this groove over the plant and water gently with warm water. Top dressing is not necessary in order not to stimulate plant growth.
