hi it's Chuck from Digg and today we're going to build a fern and moss terrarium we're going to start with gravel this is washed gravel which is great Ike because it comes pretty sandy covering the bottom and I don't want to just dump this in just in case your container is a little more fragile this is landscape fabric you're just placing that on top what it's doing is keeping the soil on the top of the gravel rather than so it just blends down it also helps with the drainage all right the next step will be just a layer of soil to the top layer that just gives us good base so that everything is covered okay the next thing we're going to add is some activated charcoal now this is available at a a pet store just keeps the soil fresh the moisture and all terrariums can get a little funky and a little bit too wet sometimes and we'll talk about that in another time all right the next layer we're going to do is the plants themselves we're going to do a fern terrarium and we're going to arrange these ferns the thing to remember with a terrarium not to overstuff it because the beauty of the terrarium is the landscape so that you want it to be you know something that you see with some space around it this one's pretty dense though so we're going to squeeze it down we're going to make a little nest for this thing down to the landscape fabric and we're going to just add that and I think off to the side is better just so everything's not so orderly and it looks a lot like a nature the type of thing all right so this really fills up quite a bit of space already if you feel like sometimes it's too big you just go in there and you just cut it I think three is always a good number the odd number is always a good amount of additives the impressionist painters added colors and threes everybody thinks in threes and everything taking a plan and trying to get as much of the soil off as possible so that what you have is just a little bit of a mound again pushing the soil away in our little nest I'm going to add this other tahrir this other fern this is a different kind of fern again I think the idea of a good terrarium is one that's going to grow taller one that's going to stay towards the bottom and textures and I think color is always good I'm adding this polka dot plant which is also very good for a terrarium we're going to add it over here and that adds a little pizzazz to the thing all right now at this point we're going to add soil around our babies here so we have to just be careful I'm doing this quickly for our demonstration but you can take your time on this because you want everything to be covered again as I've always said that the only danger for roots is air ok we have three different plants three different levels three different textures it's now taking Moss and there's two types of Moss that are available we have the clump moth like this this comes with about a bit of soil on it and we have the sheet moss which is more of a it's been excavated a little more preserved and everything both need to be kept wet we're wetting it so that the adheres and it starts growing and this is just making almost like a glow it's taking wet to wet our soil is wet the moss is wet we're going to lay this into our area we're going to tuck that in other terrarium you're looking at it from different angles side view is important here pushing it so you're seeing I've got the layer of stone I've got the layer of soil and I've got the sheet moss all right now what does happen sometimes with the change of temperatures in your room is that it gets steamed up sometimes on a side it gets steamed up you simply you never add any more water this is the key do not make this a soggy mess thinking it looks dry what you do is you'll see a steam is good but then if you get too much steam just simply take off the top let that steam evaporate and again regulate it that way so that's how we made a terrarium today