Q&A for How to Grow a Garden in a Bottle

Aside from being beautiful, bottle gardens are great space savers. Plus, you don't have to water or fertilize the plants nearly as often as you would in a normal pot or planter!

You can use young plants for this purpose. In fact, it's often easier to grow established plants than it is to grow from seeds.

Absolutely! A fish tank is a great option for growing a terrarium garden. However, you may have to water it more often than you would a bottle garden, since there's likely to be more evaporation.

Yes, you can, but it might be difficult to use a plastic bottle for the terrarium technique. Unless you cut off the top, you'll need long prongs or tweezers to get the plants into the bottle through the narrow neck.

You could, but you'd have to be very careful not to give it too much moisture. Cacti and other succulents do better in open containers.

It's just supposed to look nice, plus it is interesting to see the plants alive and thriving in a closed enviroment

Try a home-brew shop. Home brewers use big glass bottles called carboys to ferment their beer and wine. They range from three to fifteen gallons.

There are several types of succulents and cacti that grow well with little water. Please note that they still will need some water.

The plant on top grows in relation to the roots below. A larger, stronger root system means a bigger plant. To promote healthy roots, you could treat your soil and water. Roasted coffee grounds add nitrates to the soil. Or, you could dissolve antacid tablets in water before watering plants. Different plants react differently to different treatments, so be sure to research what works best with your plant.

You could. Most people use larger rocks and hard clay as drain from the dirt.

Yes, but it might be difficult, especially if the plant has leaves. If you choose to transfer the plant to another bottle, try to avoid breaking roots or damaging leaves.

Any plant you'd like as long as it is smaller than your jar. The plant will grow naturally in order to adapt to the ecosystem created.

If you properly take care of your plants, water and feed them when needed, they should remain alive and healthy in the bottle for a long time.

Due to the age of your system, the fungus may be a natural response to the fact that by this point there must be plenty of dead material on the bottom of your bottle garden, which may mean that it is benign to the living material that would also be in the jar. If the plants themselves are showing no sign of disease, then you are probably in the clear but to my knowledge ,fungus is a death sentence otherwise.