Home Ed on a Budget: How to make a terrarium

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Originally uploaded by quadrapop.

A wanted to have his own terrarium after seeing one on "Backyard Science" on ABCTV this week. So I had to come up with suitable containers.

You can use all sorts of things you find around the house to learn about the world around us. Here I'm using left over juice containers abd tape to make a sealed system terrarium.

This exercise covers the CO2/O2 cycles, respiration of plants and animals, water cycles. If you have crafty kids you can decorate the bottles, but do not cover the area above the soil as this is needed for the plants to get enough light.

Step one:
cut the top of a juice bottle so that you can hinge it back and easily fill with soil, invertibrates and plants/seeds.

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Originally uploaded by quadrapop.

Step Two:
put rocks/gravel in the bottom to provide a liquid reservoir

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Originally uploaded by quadrapop.

Step Three:
place some soil on the rocks

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Originally uploaded by quadrapop.

Step Four:
add a worm or two and some compost or mulch for the worms to eat

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Originally uploaded by quadrapop.

Step Five:
plant some fast growing seeds/seedlings - tomatoes/capsicum from the veggie crisper in your fridge, try some of the spice cupboard seeds - cumin, celery, mustard etc

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Originally uploaded by quadrapop.

Step Six:
cover the seeds, spray in some water and tape the bottle up.

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Originally uploaded by quadrapop.

Step Seven:
after a quick spray of water, tape the bottles shut, cap them and leave the bottles in a sunlit, but not too hot, position. then sit back & watch your garden grow.

I'll be taking photos periodically to record our experiment.