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Am I the only one who thinks moss terrariums are ruining how people learn plants?
I was at the Portland nursery last Saturday and watched a woman buy a $45 moss terrarium in a jar, and she told the cashier it was her first plant ever. That thing needs high humidity and indirect light, it will be brown in three weeks, and she will think she just cant grow anything. I get it, they look cute on a desk, but a pothos or a snake plant costs less and actually survives a forgetful person. I started handing out free spider plant babies at my local library in Austin six months ago and about 30 of them are still alive. So why do shops keep pushing the pretty glass death traps to beginners? Tell me if your first plant was a terrarium and how long it lasted.
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skylerrobinson27d ago
The thing nobody brings up is that a terrarium is not even a plant, it is a closed system, and closed systems fail in ways that teach you nothing. When a pothos drops a leaf you can look at the soil, touch it, move the pot, and see what happens. When a jar of moss goes brown you cannot even open it without messing up the humidity, so the whole thing becomes a mystery you are not allowed to solve. That is the real damage here. Beginners do not just lose a plant, they lose the feedback loop that makes plant care make sense. A dead snake plant tells you something. A dead terrarium just tells you that you are bad at secrets.
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