Specialty Gardening: Cookie Jar, 1 by hcmcdole

hcmcdole wrote:
Jesse,
If the ground cover is slow growing then it would be fine. Baby tears would be a fine ground cover. I wouldn't put an aggressive ground cover in though.

It depends on how big a terrarium you have as to what size plants you would use. I would stick with dwarf type plants - small ferns, peperomias, African violet, orchids, etc. Rob's Violets has lots of terrarium type plants. You can search the web as well for ideas.

A ten gallon tank may be good for about 4 small plants or 1 large one. You also want plants that don't grow tall else they will be growing out the top or pushing on the lights.

Charcoal (horticultural charcoal) is a good idea but not necessary as long as you don't have standing water which will stagnate and possibly sour.

You can also use an aquarium/terrarium as a hospital/hot house/incubator/or whatever you want to call it. I have a big aquarium that I use to encourage new growth on a lot of my small, weak begonias and propagate my last leaf of a begonia. It needs a good cleaning but the plants are thriving in it. I have lots of moss and ferns growing in it as well that came in through spores. The one thing I hate is when mushrooms grow in it because when they emit their spores it goes everywhere and makes the leaves of nice plants look dull and ugly. No real harm done, but it isn't pretty either. Anyway I have a 48 inch 4 tube fluorescent fixture on top of this tank which is on a 14 hour timer. I had to remove two of the tubes due to the heat buildup.

Here is a picture of symbegonia, begonia 'Queen Olympus', and a volunteer fern that take up residence in this tank. All the begonias in this tank are in their own pots.