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A guy at the Portland botanical garden told me my fern setup was "too tidy" and he was right
I keep about 30 ferns and mosses in a converted terrarium cabinet, and I used to scrub every leaf and clear out all the dead bits every Sunday. A volunteer named Ray at the botanical garden in Portland glanced at my photos in July and said, "You're running a hospital, not a forest." He explained that the decaying fronds and leaf litter feed the spores and keep humidity steady, and that my constant cleaning was starving the soil. So I quit wiping down the glass every weekend and let the dead matter pile up for two months. The new growth on my maidenhairs came in way thicker, and I actually saw sporelings pop up on their own for the first time. Anyone else here leave the mess alone on purpose, or am I just rationalizing my laziness now?
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