where to get bowls to make A terrarium
By Gloria Utzig
Our begonia society members and I have been using clear plastic party bowls that we easily found at our local party goods stores to make terrariums for plants that require high humidity.
The Sabert Corp. makes a 320 ounce, clear PETE (Polyethylene Terephthalate) plastic, food-grade bowl used for salads, chips, popcorn, holding ice, etc., that were sold at our local party goods stores. These bowls became harder and harder to find, as they were replaced in many stores with hard, translucent, colored or patterned plastic. I have found that the best place to find them these days is online.
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These bowls can withstand constant use, gravel, charcoal, wet dirt, moss growing on them, and still come out clean and be reusable. And once you are ready to part with them, they are a Number 1 recyclable plastic. Acrylic would never be able to stand the abuse a terrarium is subjected to. With glass terrariums, you have the danger of breakage, or worse, getting mineral stains permanently etched on them if your water is not distilled or reverse osmosis water. |
The best part about these bowls' design is that they have a flat, half inch lip that allows you to invert one bowl on top of another to make a good sized terrarium.
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The flat bowl lips also allow them to be clipped together with little clear or colored Dollar store hair clips.
An alternative to using hair clips to keep the two bowls together is to use double sided tape pieces around the lip. Or for a neater and less obtrusive solution, try using clear sticky dots that are used for paper crafting or scrapbooking. Three or four glue dots put evenly placed around on a bowl lip will keep the two bowls together. |
The glue dots can be found at craft stores and come in a variety of sizes from 1/8 inch to 1/2 inch dots, and they also come in a variety of glue strengths from light/repositionable, to super strong stickyness.
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The bowls can be found at restaurant supply houses. One of the cheaper places I found online is webstaurant.com. They carry two brands of the clear bowls, Sabert and Fineline. They also carry clear plastic containers in every size imaginable from a cupcake holder on up, and the largest clear bowls are the 320 ounce size. These large bowls are roughly 16 inches in diameter by 5 inches deep.
To give you an idea of costs, webstaurant.com as of June 1, 2016, was selling a case of 25 Sabert bowls for $43.99, plus shipping and handling (Item: #70712320CL).
The Fineline bowls are sold in a box of 5 for $11.99 (Item #: 9995320CL) or a case of 25 for $37.99 (Item #: 3465320CL).
Your local horticultural society members might want to get together and buy in bulk to save. Also, it is cheaper is you have the items shipped to a business address. For me in Massachusetts, shipping for a box of 5 bowls was $11.14 (Ground Shipping) to a business address, versus $17.55 for shipping to a residence.
FYI, the Sabert bowls cost a little more, but if you have a few begonias/terrarium plants that are taller than ten inches, you may in the future want to buy a clear plastic garden cloche/dome that sits right inside the Sabert bowl lip. These domes fit perfectly on the Sabert bowls but do not fit/sit right on the Fineline bowls--you have to trim them very carefully to make them sit right.
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The garden domes/cloches that have the most room, and fit perfectly on the Sabert Bowls, are branded Gard’n Dome by Gardeneer/Dalen a company in Tennessee that no longer makes/sources them from China. Many stores that carried them are depleting their stock, so you have to do some sleuthing to find them. They are roughly 15 inches wide by 10 inches high.
These can be found at garden and farm supply houses or online, but be sure to do price comparisons before you buy, as I have seen them being sold on up to $45 each!!
The original manufacturer in China that produced these for the Gardeneer/Dalen company will sell them directly but only with a minimum order of 100, and there is international shipping and possibly some duty/taxes involved. They can be found on the Alibaba.com website.
Mountain Orchids in Vermont, now (2018) sells these domes with bowls at a very reasonable cost! Check them out by clicking on: https://www.mountainorchids.com/product/plastic-terrarium-dome
These bowls and domes do NOT block UV rays which is great because that's what you want for your plants. You should never put a terrarium in direct sunlight as the trapped heat will cook the plants growing inside. Bright indirect light or grow lights are fine with these bowls. A regular light dusting will prevent build-up of dust that can scratch the bowl surfaces if too abrasive a scrub is used to clean them.
I have mixed and matched domes and bowls with bowl lids (sold separately) in various sizes to accommodate trailing growth plants, and small to large mounding plants. On occasion have put a potted plant (pot and all inside two bowls) that needed more humidity while I was away. This is also a great way to quarantine a new plant while you wait to see if it is a carrier of a bug that could affect your other plants. You can isolate a sick plant while you are medicating it as well.
Additionally, these bowls make for very light weight terrariums that you can move around from window to window, or room to room, so you can enjoy your plants all over your home and not have to lug a large fish tank/terrarium around.
Happy Growing!
These can be found at garden and farm supply houses or online, but be sure to do price comparisons before you buy, as I have seen them being sold on up to $45 each!!
The original manufacturer in China that produced these for the Gardeneer/Dalen company will sell them directly but only with a minimum order of 100, and there is international shipping and possibly some duty/taxes involved. They can be found on the Alibaba.com website.
Mountain Orchids in Vermont, now (2018) sells these domes with bowls at a very reasonable cost! Check them out by clicking on: https://www.mountainorchids.com/product/plastic-terrarium-dome
These bowls and domes do NOT block UV rays which is great because that's what you want for your plants. You should never put a terrarium in direct sunlight as the trapped heat will cook the plants growing inside. Bright indirect light or grow lights are fine with these bowls. A regular light dusting will prevent build-up of dust that can scratch the bowl surfaces if too abrasive a scrub is used to clean them.
I have mixed and matched domes and bowls with bowl lids (sold separately) in various sizes to accommodate trailing growth plants, and small to large mounding plants. On occasion have put a potted plant (pot and all inside two bowls) that needed more humidity while I was away. This is also a great way to quarantine a new plant while you wait to see if it is a carrier of a bug that could affect your other plants. You can isolate a sick plant while you are medicating it as well.
Additionally, these bowls make for very light weight terrariums that you can move around from window to window, or room to room, so you can enjoy your plants all over your home and not have to lug a large fish tank/terrarium around.
Happy Growing!
