It has been a long, long while since I wrote a “how to”. I suppose I figure just about everyone knows how to do it better than me.

But lately, I have had an obsession that was inspired by a completely accidental click on a listing on Etsy.  That obsession is moss terrariums.

Terrariums have a long and proud history reaching back over several centuries to when Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward first accidentally discovered that some hard to grow plants could be more easily grown in a glass enclosure. Thus a fad akin to pet rocks, jelly bracelets and origami boulders was born.  The use of terrariums has waxed and waned ever since.

These days, terrariums are in full swing again, though sometimes with a modern (technological) twist. But, one current version of the terrarium that has caught my attention (and the attention of light deprived office and apartment dwellers) is the moss terrarium.

The indoor climate in most homes and offices is hostile to moss. Moss likes humidity and moisture  and lots of it. The humans who live in homes and offices like to avoid mold and saunas, which is created by humidity and moisture. The two worlds don’t match well.  Enter the terrarium.

Moss lives happily in terrariums, and even better, lives happily in low light. Perfect for a office desk top application or a home coffee table addition no matter what your light conditions happen to be.

Making a moss terrarium is as easy as 1… 2… 3… um, 4…  You can handle 4 steps, right?

Step 1 – Supplies

1 glass jar with lid – I have been picking up rather elegant glass jars at the thrift store lately and can usually score one for between $1 and $3.  I have also used interesting jars from my kitchen, like honey jars.  What style you choose is not important. It just needs to be a jar with a lid. Oh, and the lid does not need to fit tightly.

Soil – Um, duh. It is a plant and this is not hydroponics.

Moss – The moss pictured here was harvested at my parents, who own an acre of wooded property. But, you can find moss in a wide variety of places. I have seen it on sidewalk and at the foundations of building. Just keep your eyes open. While there is only one variety of moss in this picture, I have made moss terrariums with up to 5 different kinds of moss harvested from my parent’s property. Different moss have different texture and can add visual appeal  to the terrarium.

Decorations – Moss terrariums without kitsch of some kind are still visually appealing, but a bit of whimsy can add a little extra umph.  Get those miniature craft supplies out. We are gonna have ourselves a pizzazz party.

Step 2 – Place soil in jar

Refer to the last Um statement. It is a plant. It needs soil.

Fill the jar to a visually appealing height. While moss needs some soil, is does not need much.  A half inch is the least amount you need, but you can use more if it looks good.

Step 3 – Place the moss

Place the moss on the soil.  Make sure the sheet of moss sits firmly on the soil. Press down the moss to make sure it is making contact with the soil below. 

Then use a spoon to push the edges of the moss down around the soil, like you are tucking in a bed. Water the moss until the soil is moist.

Step 4 – Add kitsch

You can leave your moss terrarium bare of decor and have your own little jar of Zen. But, if you want to add a little something-something, get creative. Little decorations add visual interest.   In my case, I found a miniature cross on sale at the local craft store.  So, harkening back to my gothic teen years, I created a little graveyard on a hill. Using the tiny cross and a few Swarovski crystal beads to imitate flowers, I have a scene worth dying for.

You might want to do something a bit more light, like a fairy garden or a toadstool. To each their own. Whatever you find cute will do.

In 2 - 3 weeks you will see signs that your moss is adjusting to an enclosed life. You will see some growth and greening. Water the moss terrarium as the soil dries, which in my experience is about once a month.

It is that most joyous time of year where gardeners around the world, in a desperate attempt to thwart off SAD and homicidal thoughts, converge on malls, shopping centers and craft shows like rabid squirrels with credit cards. I am not so certain that these are really the best places for people who have botanically inspired homicidal thoughts to converge, so I am really posting this as a public service announcement.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, it is the holiday season and you have no money. (trust me, don’t go checking your wallet. It is really, really empty. Especially if you have kids.)

But do not despair; gift giving does not have to be expensive. You just have to be creative. This year, you will be giving all of your favorite relatives or friends or teachers their own unique and lovely framed botanical print. I know, it does not sound cheap, but really, it is.

What you will need for this project is:

• a frame (any size)
• a computer
• a color printer
• paper

The quality of the paper can vary depending on your budget. If you find yourself without a color printer, your local Kinko’s will do color prints for about $1 each.

As far as the frame goes, for this kind of gift, I prefer a simple black frame. Normally you can pick one up at a dollar store or outlet store (we have Marc’s here) for just a dollar or two. If you want to get really fancy, you can splurge $3 on a can of gold or silver spray paint and paint the frame.

Next, you will need to select a botanical print. The really awesome thing about most botanical prints that you find on the web is that they are from books that are several hundred years old. This means that the copyrights on them have long since expired. Not sure where to go to find these free botanical prints? My favorite place is WikiMedia Commons, which is a branch of Wikipedia. To make thing easy for you, Here are a few searches that bring up some lovely botanical prints:

• Curtis’s Botanical Magazine
• Botanical illustrations
• Botanical illustrations Orchidaceae
• Edwards’s Botanical Register
• Leonardo da Vinci Botanical Drawings

Choose an image. Keep in mind that larger images will print better when resized, so look for larger images to do this with. Click on it until you get down to just the image file URL. You will know this because all of the WikiMedia navigation and text will no longer be on the screen. Right click on the images and choose “Save picture as…” Save the image to your computer.

If you find you need to make changes to the image, such as adding a personal message or resizing or touchup, there is an awesome free photo editor online called Picnik. You can make changes to the picture there without needing to buy software.

Once you have the image on your computer, you can print it. If you choose to print it from home, make sure that your printer’s print quality is set to Highest or Best. This can be changed in Control Panel>Printers>Right Click on Printer>Properties> click on the button Print Preferences on the General tab.

If you are taking it to a Kinko’s or the like, ask then to print it as a high quality.

These images look best printed on off white paper, instead of bright white paper. This will help to keep the illusion of it being an antique print. If you want to enhance the look of the print, printing it on linen paper will do this. It will cost a little more and to be fair, they still look great printed on normal paper.

Place the image in the frame and you are done. Perfect gift for the flower and plant lover in your life. The bonus is that by looking at all of those pretty botanical prints, you can believe, just for a moment, you are back out in your garden. And maybe you can stop the spending (or killing) spree that the lack of garden had caused in the first place.

Ok, so the headline is misleading. This is not exactly an Aerogarden. It doesn’t squirt nutrient rich juices at the roots of your plants. But it does do the one thing that I think makes the Aerogarden popular, and that it is a garden that sits on the counter without needing additional light sources.

I took this idea from a viral video that was popular about a year ago entitled “How to make a USB greenhouse”. Freaky, geeky, interesting thing to do, but really, if there are two important things to remember.

A) Plants need liquid to survive.
B) Liquid fries computers.
Conclusion – attaching a plant to your computer does not fall into the good idea realm.

But the idea was intriguing. I had not done a How To in forever and this looked perfect. Could you make a counter top garden using common LED lights? I did a little research…

It turns out that LED lights are becoming popular for indoor gardening. Low wattage and low heat are making them popular. But there is a catch. You need a combination of various color LED lights to mimic natural sunlight. Plants need blue and red spectrum light to grow correctly. But wait! This project is not dead. There is more.

Blue light is responsible for vegetative growth while red light is responsible for flowering growth. The average “white” LED that you can buy from the store is high on the blue spectrum of light (that is why it has that blue – not white – tinge when you turn them on). They can be used to grow plants where you want the vegetation (that would be the leaves) to grow. i.e. perfect for an herbal counter top garden.

I am a huge fan of fresh herbs. To tell the truth, fresh herbs (ok, the freaking high cost of buying fresh herbs) was the original lure that brought me back to gardening in my college years. I have tried to grow herbs indoors in the winter, but, alas, I really, really suck at it. Well, no, I don’t suck at it. Cleveland just does not have sun power in the winter. As a matter of fact, I am fairly certain that the sun flies south in the winter as far as Cleveland is concerned.

Click on the image above to see a larger image

For this project, you will need:

• 1 large coffee can – free from the recycling bin
• 1 large margarine tub – free from the recycling bin
• 1 pack of two stick on LED night lights – $6.50 at Target
• 1 roll of duct tape – Free if you have an adult male living in your home. If you have an adult male and there is no duct tape, please refer to the reading material of PFLAG as this talk is coming soon.
• Batteries (for the night lights) – $3

Click on the image above to see a larger image

Start with the coffee can. It needs to be a metallic can. My husband is a coffee drinker, but not a coffee connoisseur, so we just buy the cheapest coffee imaginable, which comes in a metallic can. If you are a coffee connoisseur and your coffee comes in air sealed bags or plastic canisters, you may need to rummage through a neighbor’s recyclable bin some night. Also, it needs to be a coffee can. Not a peaches can, not a industrial size ketchup can. More on this later.

Take the coffee can and mark out an area that is about one third of the can. Leave a 1 – 2 inch lip near the bottom (non open) part of the can. Cut the marked area out. We used tin snips, but you can use what you have available, like perhaps a sawsall (with a throw away blade) or a nail as a punch .

The end result should look like a beginner, flat broke fanboy’s attempt at a helmet for the renaissance festival.

Click on the image above to see a larger image

The edges on the can will be very sharp, so be careful. The author of this post is NOT responsible if you severely cut yourself and must be rushed to an emergency room which cost millions of dollars and you then feel you must sue the author to recoup the costs. I warned you. I am just about broke anyway. So just be careful.

Because the edges are sharp, we need to cover them. Take the duct tape and use it to cover all of the cut edges of the coffee can.

Click on the image above to see a larger image

Next, remove the paper backing on the LED night lights. The night lights I bought had 3 LEDs each. The more LEDs in the night lights, the better.

You can put up to 4 night lights in the can (which I may do later, depending on how the plants grow) but then this would be a $15 counter top garden. Your choice.

Click on the image above to see a larger image

Stick the night lights to the can. Place them as far back as possible. This will ensure that more of the light stays inside the can.

The reason the metallic can is important is because we need to try to keep as much of the light bouncing around for as long as possible. The metal will reflect the light back at the plants where plastic would just absorb it.

Click on the image above to see a larger image

Next, prepare your margarine tub. Again, it must be a large margarine tub. Other tubs will not work. More on this later.

If you would like, you can cut drainage holes in the bottom. I did not because I did not want to worry about water draining out over the counter. But I will need to make sure I do not over water my plants. You can also add a layer of Styrofoam peanuts or gravel to the bottom of the tub to help with drainage. I use normal potting soil in my margarine tub.

Click on the image above to see a larger image

Next, plant your herbs. Mine were dug up from the garden. I will warn you, most people will want to make this in the Fall. Plant stores don’t sell herb in the Fall. I know, I went to 4 of them and not one had herbs. Plan ahead or get your herbs from an established garden.

The type of herbs you use are up to you. I chose sage, thyme, rosemary and oregano. I may start a whole new counter top garden just for basil.

Click on the image above to see a larger image

Now, here is the step where I explain why you must have a coffee can and a margarine tub. If you look in your margarine tub, you will see a little lip about a quarter to a half inch down on the inside. Your inverted coffee can will sit exactly on that lip, so that the coffee can will not sink into the soil.

Turn on the lights and place the can over the plants. Trim back as much as you can of any plants poking out of the opening. Plants growing outside the opening will not live. The plants will only live if they grow inside the can.

Click on the image above to see a larger image

Make sure you use the herbs A LOT. This will keep them compact and bushy, so that they do not outgrow the can.

So there you go. A counter top garden for herbs that you can make. Yes, it does look like you ran away with the Black Knight’s helmet and used it for a planter, but that’s what you get for being cheap.

And yes, I know, having the light on all the time is not the healthiest thing for plants. Yes, I know, this is not the ideal growing light for plants. But the point of this is not to create an ideal environment or even pretty plants. The idea is to have fresh tasty herbs without having to sell one of my children to gypsies in order to pay for it. It is a “make due” until the sun once again graces us here in Cleveland.

Just call me Hang ‘Em High Hanna.This past weekend, I took my own advice (along with the advice of some other people) and set up a string support for my beloved tomatoes. And since I like to be on the bleeding edge of technology that everyone else is already doing, I put this how-to in video format.

Enjoy!

Link to Video

It is Halloween and Halloween is one of my most favorite holidays. My husband’s as well. We are very particular about our Halloween traditions. He always makes the kids costumes. And I always decorate the yard.

We don’t go in for much of that buying Halloween paraphernalia stuff (though I do clean up at after Halloween sales). I mean, after all, it is much more fun to make your own bloody stumps than to buy one.

I probably put more into decorating my house for Halloween than I do into decorating it for Christmas. Halloween is just fun to decorate for. It is the one night a year when the world gets to be all topsy turvey. You are suppose to be scared. You are suppose to be crazy. You are suppose to be something other than what you are.

Which is why a week before Halloween, me and the boys head out into the yard and I let them loose with props, tempera paint and a blood lust. Next thing you know, we have a bona fide crime scene going, with body outlines and blood spatter everywhere. CSI would be proud.

Every year, we also try to create one car stopping, holy crap what is that thing in our yard. The type of thing that will have someone heading home and telling a friend, “You’ll never guess what I saw…” This year, that thing was the Shrub Monster.

We have this shrub that sits in the middle of our front yard. I wanted to get rid of it, but my husband begged me to keep it. I told him that, much like the dog, as long as he took care of it and I didn’t have to bother with it, it would stay. And so it goes that my husband is now the Official Shrub Shaper and Trimmer, which is his only other gardening duty other than Lawn Mowing and Moving Heavy Pots.

The shrub is now 8′ tall and looks like a conehead, but I don’t have to mess with it so that’s okay with me.

This year, while we were decorating the yard for Halloween, it occurred to me that the shrub would make a really good decoration on its own. We had just finished making a pair of Lawn Eyeballs and an idea formed in my head.

We shoved the giant eyeballs into the shrub, added a tongue (cut from an old egg crate foam mattress and spray painted red) and fangs (cut from a piece of shipping packaging styrofoam). And to top it off, we stuck a plastic severed foot into the “mouth”.

Traffic has been slowing down all week and tonight people were even posing with it. Mission accomplished. We once again have the cool Halloween house on the block.

It just goes to show, if you keep your eye and imagination open, your garden can help out in all sorts of way. Of course they may be a few small children who will have odd nightmares tonight about man-eating hedges, but as I said… It is Halloween. You are suppose to be scared. And even shrubs have a right to be scary.

It is the time of year that we all trade our seeds. But if you want to be super cool… if you want to be one of the hip seed traders… you need to make sure that you have some super cool seed packets.

Of course, you could run out and and hit the yuppie stores and pay an arm and a pinkie toe for some designer seed packets (the very latest from Milan). I think they may even make them with perfumed paper and the latest and greatest designer colors.

Me, I would rather make my own (that and my bank account is insisting on it). Of course making good seed packets is really beyond my technical and creative skills. My seed packets would normally involve newspaper and large amounts of scotch tape and would culminate in looking more like origami boulders than seed packets. But I have the power of the internet at my fingertips which gives me access to all sorts of fabulous and creative people. It just so happens there is a creative person out there who has made a whole line of print-cut-paste seeds packets that anybody can make and use.

Maggie Wang has put together some really cool seed packet patterns. You can just open them as a PDF and then print them out on the paper of your choice. Fold on the easy dotted lines, and *voila* you will be the envy of your seed trading circle — trading seeds in super cool style.

Of course, you may have to forgo buying the Martha Stewart line of seeds packets, but to tell the truth, I think hers only come with seeds already inside. Not nearly as impressive when you are trading.

So let’s say you have a Bush you need to remove and it’s not a leader of a super power nation…

Those of you looking for information on how to remove the other kind of Bush will need to visit some of the more left wing political blogs and discuss it there.

I have, or I should say had, a few of those non-political bushes that need to be removed. It was a nice day and the battery on the Sawzall was fully charged. I got medieval on a few bushes’ asses today.

I talked about these bushes just a little while ago when I talked about plant euthanasia.

These brushes are inherited landscape from the previous owners. The large purple shrub is actually an ornamental plum tree that has been tortured over the years into this overgrown shrub. I particularly hate this one. It grows an incredible amount every year and I find myself randomly hacking off large amounts several times a year in an attempt to keep it presentable. Far too much work for a shrub in my opinion.

The other, which is draping over the wall, is actually dying. I have never known what it is exactly. It was trained to hang down over the wall and up until late last year was a healthy, happy plant. I had to trim a few errant branches once a year, but other than that, it was no problem. Then suddenly, it went from a very healthy green to a sickly sort of yellow and has just gotten worse with dying branches and lost leaves. I do not love it enough to take the time to figure out what’s wrong. It is time for it to go.

One of the best tools you can have for bush removal is a cordless sawzall and a package of cheap saw blades. This can make the whole job, from taking out the branches to removing the stump, a whole lot easier.

The first thing you want to start with is removing branches. With the sawzall, this is a snap.

Once you have all of the upper branches cut, it is time to start on the stump. Let’s face it, the branches are the easy part. It’s the stump that most people dread. A stump is like a pitbull that has clamped its jaws down on your arm. They are rather ugly to look at and it is going to take an extraordinary amount of effort to remove them, unless you have a convenient nearby power tool.

This is why you buy the cheap blades for the sawzall. Take a spade or shovel and remove as much of the dirt as you can around the stump. Don’t worry if you don’t get it all cleared out. If you run into a root, apply pressure to the root with the sawzall. Remember, cheap blades, so you don’t need to care if the blade is plunged into the soil to be able to do this. Keep clearing dirt and chopping roots until you get to the taproot. Dig as far down as you can (or care to) and shove that blade right down in there and cut through the dirt and root.

Yes, some of the roots will be left in the soil, but they will break down much faster than the stump would have. For the most part, there roots will not impede your future plantings. If they do, apply the all fixing sawzall to the problem root.

In no time you will have a clear area.

And I can hear the resounding hesitant silence. Erm… Hanna, that’s not looking glorious and finished. That area just looks vacant and bear. Are you sure it is an improvement over the shrubs?

Removal of bushes is never meant to instantly improve the look of an area. It is meant to provide a scrubbing of the canvas, so to speak. I have a clean slate that I can now take some of the techniques I have learned over at Whispering Crane and apply them to replanting this area in a more coherent fashion.

Alright, alright, you got me. That whole idea of planning a design is only my fantasy. What will really happen is I will plant whatever plants need a home in there and hope for the best. It has worked for me so far.

I haven’t done a decent how-to lately and as I was staring at my filthy grubby hands, I thought that maybe someone would like to know how to pamper our lovely and abused gardening hands.

Just a note, I am doing this from the assumption that many gardener’s are like myself. Nail care tends to cut into gardening time and is kept to a minimum. All I am trying to accomplish here is to get decently clean nails so that they are presentable.

This is what my hands look like after weeding for just 20 minutes. Dirt is crammed stubbornly under the nails and into the cuticle beds. Even if I take a nail brush to my nails, the dirt still tends to stick in those hard to reach places.

On top of that, dirt is terrible for the skin. I end up with hands that the Crypt Keeper would be proud of.

After I do a quick wash, I put together a bowl of three things easily found in the kitchen. Water with a splash of milk and oil (I prefer olive oil).

The bowl goes in the microwave for a minute, just to heat it up a bit.

I soak my hands in the warm mixture for 10 to 15 minutes, preferably while watching some sexy, fluffy prime time show like Grey’s Anatomy.

I also rub a bit of the liquid up on the backs of my hands. Extra moisturizer never hurt.

After soaking, I take a toothpick and run it along the under side of my nail and around the cuticles, slightly pushing the cuticles back.

And in no time at all I have clean nails and I am all caught up on this week’s emotional antics of Meredith, Izzie and Cristina.

WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE

I hate them. You hate them (or if you don’t, you should). Slugs. They are the bane of a gardener’s existence. The sweetest, would-not-hurt-a-fly gardener will gleefully crush the soft, slimy bodies of these ugly, plant devouring monsters.

The best way to kill slugs depends on two factors. The first being how much work you would like to invest in eradicating slugs from your garden. The second is how much suffering you would like the slugs to go through.

The Salt Method – This is an age old and particularly gruesome method of killing slugs. It requires a fair amount of effort though. Basically, you go out in your garden in the dark of night, armed with a flashlight and a salt shaker. Search your plants that have had tell-tale holes eaten into them. Find the slugs, and as you find them, pluck them off the plant and shake just a tad bit of salt on them. The salt will draw the water out of the slug and it will die.

The Beer Method – This is a kind hearted killers way of disposing of slugs, but it is pretty labor free. All you do is leave a shallow dish of beer out in the part of your garden where you are having a slug problem. The next morning, you will awake to either a very drunk raccoon or a dish filled with dead slugs. Your chances of finding a dish of dead slugs is higher, but a drunk raccoon is amusing in its own right.

The Melon Method – This is another low effort method you can try whenever you have a melon to eat. Eat the flesh out of the melon. Then leave the hollowed out rind turned melon side down in the garden with a pebble under the edge to prop it up a bit (think Wile E. Coyote Road Runner trap). Leave overnight. In the morning, the underside of the rind will be covered with slugs that you can kill at your leisure. This method works particularly well if you have a resident raccoon hanging about. The raccoon will most likely find the slug filled melon rind before you do and will help himself to a healthy breakfast of melon flavored slugs. Yum.

The Diatomaceous Earth Method – If you thought that using salt to suck the water out of the slugs body was a delightfully cruel way to kill them, wait to you get a load of diatomaceous earth. Sprinkle this stuff over the slug infested area, and it will shred the body of the slug as it crawls over it, which ultimately kills it. Diatomaceous earth is like a powdered Cuisinart! How fun is that?

The Plain Old Squishing Method – Well, in the end, there is something to be said for just squishing slugs as you find them. It is pretty gross, but is wonderfully satisfying.

Not that I am advocate of theft, but it happens. It is one of the dirty little secrets of the gardening community. We gardeners are just obsessive compulsive sometimes and when we see a plant we have to have, we will do anything to have it, including steal.

But like the Mafia, gardeners have a bizarre Code of Honor when breaking the law. Outright theft is a big no-no (unless the building is due for demolition or is very abandoned but that is another part of The Code that we will look at another day), but stealing just a little part of the plant is not beyond us. Some of us even carry pruning shears around with us in the event that we find That Plant which requires us to break the law.

The trick is to know what part of the plant to take to guarantee that when we get home we will be able to grow our ill begotten cutting.

Softwood cuttings are how many trees and shrubs are propagated. Softwood cuttings are best taken in spring when the softwood is, well, softest. Softwood refers to the new growth on a tree or shrub.

The easiest way to tell if a plant is good softwood candidate is to look at a branch. The softwood will look and feel like a regular plant, soft and easily crushed between your fingers. The softwood will lead down to the hardwood , which will feel like a normal tree branch, with a rough bark (or bark-like) covering and hard to crush. The softer the wood the better the cutting will root. As soft wood ages, it becomes more and more like hardwood.

Once you have determined where the softwood is, take a 4 – 8 inch cutting of the softwood. If there is no 4 inch piece of softwood, you may have a difficult time getting the cutting to root.

Get a pot of soilless potting mix. This is “dirt” that has no dirt meaning the stuff you find in your yard. Most container mixes you buy at the store are soilless.

Strip the leaves off the bottom half to third of the stem.

Dip the stripped part of the stem in water and then in a rooting hormone like Rootone. The stripped part of the stem should be covered by the rooting hormone.

Stick your finger in the soilless mix to make a hole.

Stick the cutting in the hole and push the dirt around the cutting with your fingers. You do this so that the rooting hormone will stay stuck to the stem. If you just shoved the cutting into the dirt, the rooting hormone would be left on top of the dirt.

Place the cutting in indirect light and try to keep it moist and in a humid environment. The best way to do this is to make a soda bottle cloche. It is made the same way as the weed killer shield I made a few weeks ago (except that you don’t spray weed killer on the cutting).

Don’t panic if your cutting looks a bit peaked. You would look less than happy too if you were just ripped from your family and shoved in a pot. Your cutting will recover, hopefully. Remember, some cuttings root better than others. Not all of your cuttings will survive. If the first cutting doesn’t survive, go back and steal another one. Or just ask. Most gardeners are happy to share.

NOTE: No cuttings were stolen in the making of this webpage. Thanks to my neighbor Maxine for letting me take a cutting of her Hakuro Nishiki Willow