Cactus House

Oh, this must be the longest hiatus that I had for this blog after the holidays. Whatever hit my life big time, what is more important now is that I am still kicking after all, and mind you, I am just as happy as I should be.

I was always anticipating weekends with bushy tail from my busy teaching career because I had garden make over at home this month. After years of experimenting for effective practices and mastering the art, I am overwhelmed by the result of my personal desire to build a terrarium for my unique dessert plants.

Extended beside our newly constructed concrete wall is a knee high concrete rectangular plant box that measures about eight spans long. I filled it with soil and then landscaped its top floor with many stones of varying sizes.

I used corrugated bars for its arch roofing and covered it with a seventy percent weaved net. Since cactus plants don't like heavy amount of water, I doubled its roof area with plastic cover to prevent excessive water during rainy days. With this roofing, I also love the gentle amount of sunlight that penetrates the terrarium which does not cause sun burn to the plants.

I designed the back portion of the plant box that is leaning to the concrete wall with big rocks to give an arid look that I typically imagine of a dessert biomes that have hilly parts and plain areas. I think there must be high and low points within the terrarium to give something variation to its overall dimension. 

I arranged all the plants considering their heights. I placed the tall and long ones atop the rocks at the back part while I simply arranged the round and flat ones just below the plain area. I have some small potted cactus and I used them to fill in the dead spaces in between the larger pots.

Now that I have almost reached the plateau of my obsession, it is my wish that my cactus collection will grow even better - no plant pests and no growth gaps. I love to imagine something bigger soon.