Okay, it's not that ugly - only because I fixed it this morning. I was too embarrassed to show it here before. Right now it looks okay-ish, but there's definitely a lot of stuff for me to work on in the future. Maybe when it grows a little, it'll look better. I'll post some pics in a few months. In general, I really enjoyed the experience. It was fun doing some small-scale plant-tinkering with tweezers, crushing coal, and trying to fit everything in place - almost like solving a puzzle.
Basic explanation of layers (from bottom to top):
- clay pebbles or pea gravel
- window screen mesh to stop soil from mixing with drainage
- charcoal to filter water
- substrate (coconut peat + sphagnum moss + a little bit of my default soil)
- a few types of moss, a fern, a stone, and a few small groundcover plants
Some mistakes I made:
- drainage layer is too thick - half of that would be better
- filter screen radius is too big - looks ugly (the border between substrate and drainage)
- ugly-ass jar - next time I'll definitely find something decent
- more types of plants or decorative stuff needed
- no springtails (need to find some in my area)
Also, today I'm getting a big package of sphagnum moss delivered, and I’ll finally be able to make more sustainable propagation boxes for moss and everything else. (Right now it's just some soil at the bottom - not the best solution.) I'll build something similar to this structure: drainage -> window screen mesh -> charcoal -> sphagnum. Maybe something a bit simpler - haven’t decided yet.
p.s. I added a plants tag to keep everything clean. I'll try to make all the plant-related posts separate since they've been infiltrating all my weeknotes lately.