An update on the terrarium

It's been quite a long time since I converted my terrarium to succulents -- almost three years -- and almost a year since I've even shown you what's going on there (when I replaced one of the plants).

It's time for an update, as I'm planning on doing some work on this little basement garden over the holidays, and having a good record of "before" is necessary.

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The first thing you'll probably notice is that I keep this in a dark corner of the basement. Not the most inviting of areas, but the terrarium helps make it a little nicer. (The treadmill is down here, so I look at the plants quite a bit in winter.) The lighting is now provided by "temporary" clamp-on fluorescent lights, hence the harshness of some of these photos.

We'll start with the obvious: one of the cactus has grown much more than expected and is now several inches taller than the top of the tank and therefore the lights.

That brown tip of the one segment is where the plant grew too close to the light, getting burned. After I moved the light, it just kept on growing.

I'm thinking that one of my tasks next will be to remove this plant, pot it up separately, and replace with something smaller.

Almost everything else in here is doing well but keeping to the space they have:

There's a bit of crowding and shading out of neighbors, but nothing is suffering.

The amazing thing is that I water only once a month or so, and fertilize probably once a year -- maybe twice.

I've even had some blooms in here:

There is one plant that is not doing so well:

This cactus is almost completely brown on the side facing the lights, but still green on the back or where it's self-shaded. I find it hard to believe that these lights are too much for it, but they must be, right? I think I'll have to remove this guy too and put him in his own pot.

Not looking forward to getting those two spiny plants out of that small area!

I'll do a lot more cleanup too, perhaps removing some of the pups, as most of these plants have started to spread quite a bit and probably need a little more room.

So overall the succulent terrarium has been a success!


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