Photos of a few micro-mini setups

[treylane]

I'm in love with micro-mini orchids!! I'm still pretty new to the plant world, but I've been keeping reef aquariums for a long time. Many of the ideas and some of the equipment from reefkeeping transfers pretty well to growing plants.

I made a brief attempt at a mini orchid viv a few years ago, but life got in the way. Last year I started over again with more OOMPH. Over the past year I've set up a few different "terrariums" and learned a lot from each one. I'll share a few photos of the good, the bad, and the future.

It all started with a photo of the amazing Masdevallia erinacea, a plant that I STILL can barely keep alive.

This is my first "terrarium" ... really it's just a shallow glass dish with a chunk of hygrolon-covered epiweb standing in it. This lives on my kitchen counter, there's always some water in the resevoir, and the background gets watered or misted nearly every day. I've had a few losses of plants that needed more humidity than this can provide, but most handle it well:

Starting up:



I attached the plants with clear thread and used a giant upholstery needle to "sew" them through the fabric and ecoweb and anchor them. I did this for the first two terrariums I set up but it turned out to be unnecessary. Now I just push regular straight sewing pins through the sphagnum into the background and that holds well enough.


Planted round 1:


Planted round 2:


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Someone convinced me that lepanthes telipogoniflora was a ZOMG MUST HAVE... and no way was the little kitchen wall going to make it happy. So terrarium #2 came along! It's an IKEA SOCKER greenhouse, and the orchids are mounted to epiweb covered in hygrolon.

This is test-fitting the background and using insulation foam to stick the pieces of structure to the background.
Foam was definitely the wrong way to attach everything, a few stitches with needle and strong thread would have been faster and stronger.


What the background looked like once it was covered with hygrolon:


Getting ready for planting:


Everything sewn on:


After a little growth:

[Ordphien]

Very cute.
I love micro mini setups too.
Really need some ecoweb

[Pattywack]

Oh how neat! I have the same little greenhouse stuffed with minis and a few ferns. It sits on my kitchen counter in an east facing window. Mine is not planted, they are mounted and hang from the sides and a wire I added along the back holds 6 mounts. I have a Tolumnia sylvertris El Gato mounted on a wine cork hanging from the center support wire. I added a tiny fan to the back corner.
Love the minis and I love Ordphien's nightstand lantern!

[Leafmite]

Very nice! I think I need to do something like this one of these days!

[treylane]

And on to the third little setup!

The ikea box is actually pretty amazing for $14, but in the summer it needs to be watered EVERY day or ELSE... So I started looking around for something with a tighter seal.

Voila!


Err, wait, I think we need some structure in there! Here's in-progress. The wire supports are temporary to hold the mopani wood and styrofoam together while the apoxie hardens:


It turns out that there was plenty of leftover hygrolon, here's what the structure looked like pre-planting:


And after mounting:


This terrarium seals MUCH better than the previous one. It maintains very high (95%+) humidity and only needs watering every 1-2 weeks depending on the season

[Pattywack]

Treylane, that is beautiful! You have a talent for landscaping with these little ones. Do you have any issues with mold? I like my Ikea greenhouse because it is not air tight and I have added a tiny fan. I hope your plants grow well in this one, no problems without air circulation. Please update as you continue with your projects. Very cool, thanks for the share.

[treylane]

Yes, I've had a few encounters with mold. In the bell-jar setup, flowers on Platystele beatricis mold once they're spent. In the socker setup there's little patch of slime mold on the hygrolon that afaict isn't hurting anything, so I haven't taken steps to mitigate it.

[Tindomul]

Nice use of the hygrolon. Thanks for sharing your ideas.

[RosieC]

Great looking setups!

[Optimist]

The only think I would really worry about was air flow. I have always freaked out if my plants did not have movement due to air flow. I don't know where I got that, probably taking an orchid book too literally.