Bringing the Outside, In (Mini Gardens)

I live in the Texas Hill Country. Out here, springs are wet, summer long and hot. Fall here and gone and winter brings ice. It may seem chaotic to us control loving humans, but to the native wildlife. The 'mild' and short winters coupled with warm summers allow a long and predictable growing season. Normally that is. This year, due to the prior years El Niño, we are experiencing a wet and soggy La Niña. Meaning any plants that were unable to sprout due to the triple digits followed by a hard freeze, will have a soft ground and more fertile soil to look forward to this year. That coupled with the plethora of heat we always get down here and I expect this year to be a great one for growing plants and finding insects for my lizards.

I like to keep my lizard diet as varied and natural as possible as all 3 of them are wild caught from my parents backyard. It's not and uncommon situation to find me digging under dirt or flipping rocks over and collecting what crawls beneath. One thing I like about my job as a kennel tech is I get a lot of time to look for bugs while watching the dogs. Anything of interest is also proudly able to be displayed to my bosses whom, being veterinarians, love to hear the accompanying research I always provide with my catch. So far I've caught a Copperhead Snake, Gulf Coast Toad and A Texas Cave Scorpion at this office and it's been a little over a year. Safe to say I've found my forever job haha.

Another thing I like to do when I have a little down time at work is make 'miniature gardens' out of this beautiful succulent prarie we just happen to have growing next to the kennel house. Some sort of Sedum succulent, which is a low growing, vine like succulent with small flowers during spring. Specifically I belive it's of the 'Many Fingers' variety or maybe even some of the 'Donkey Tails' genus. Considering last year, the constant heat actually killed them, I wanted to make sure I could preserve a few samples to see just what variety we were dealing with.

Utilizing a pair of scissors, a paper coffee cup and some clever ingenuity, I was able create a few planters. Complete with water catchers for any excess drainage. Considering succulents like sandy, well draining soil for their shallow roots to sift through easily, I got to work lining each bottom of the planter with same soil coming from outside. Getting lucky I stumbleded upon some moss on the edge of the little field and collected some samples of that as well. Different plants add different shapes and appeal to the gardens and make your finishing product all the more beautiful. I also made sure to collect some fun stones and sticks with lichen. The more the merrier!

Once all my material was gathered, I got to work making the little cups look as natural as possible. Moss is a cool little fella. It's kinda a free growing plant, meaning it doesnt really need all the things regular plants need to survive. It's happy sitting on a rock and getting sprayed with water maybe once a week. If its warm and moist enough and you step back, it grows to look like really short grass. Placing that down first in your 'mini gardens' or vivariums and layering it ontop of each other, you can create cool miniature grassy fields and cliffside. Moss it's self is honestly just a fun plant to work with. I'm going to have to dedicate a blog to them specifically cause these guys get unfairly overlooked while they are just casually filtering our air and putting out a lot of wildfires. I love moss....

Anyways, once you have your 'grass' laid down. Your going to want to poke little holes through the moss to the soil and get your succulents ready to plant. When you transfer them from the wild to the new habitat, your going to want to pull them by their roots gently. Too much force and your succulent will succumb to both shock and damage later after you water them. Place them in your mini grass field how you want them. If you have different types of succulents available, you will want to make sure you space them appropriately. Remember you want them to eventually grow so don't put in too many or the will be overcrowded and die. Less is more, but get creative! Any rocks and sticks can be placed in once the plants have been placed and watered.

So a cool thing about succulents is they can reproduce simply by breaking off a piece of them. Not only is this a good way to propugate the plant, but it also means that if the plant happens to fall over in it's terrarium , IT'S OKAY! They will likely not care and whichever part is touching the ground will just grow roots and become the new bottom. I've literally just tossed some of these succulent into my rainforest terrarium to see if they would take root. One plant literally landed upside down and I just left it. Well two weeks later all those plants are still alive and even putting out flowers. Even the plant that landed on the fake leaf. It literally said 'screw it, I get my water from the air now' and is starting to bud little yellow flowers. When I say these plants are hardy, I mean it. Hardy! 

(Another Miniature Garden I created. This one was made in a coffee pot)

And boom botta bam! You have a mini garden. It's a quick and easy time killer and when I say people love them, I mean it. My coworker literally became wide eyed with wonder when she saw what I was doing and I offered to make her one. She followed me during the process asking great care question and happily showing hers off before taking it home where it sits on her desk I presume. It's a fun project for all ages and not to mention educational if you take time to do proper research, as you should. I would love to see more people presenting these as gifts to the nature lovers in their lives than simple store bought items. Nothing beats the love and attention that goes into bringing the outside, in. 

(I made many that day. Two became gifts and two became decorum)