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:
Photos of a few micro-mini setups
Threaded Mode
