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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Enjoy!

Link to Video

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.