How to make a Wabi Kusa || Wabi Kusa Tutorial || Planted substrate ball
Wabi-kusa is a Japanese art form made popular by Takashi Amano. They are balls of substrate that are usually covered with aquatic plants that are grown in their terrestrial/emerged form, very similar to plants that are grown hydroponically in nurseries. These planted substrate balls are placed in a small glass container with some water and then allowed to grow naturally.
(There is no direct translation of ‘Wabi-kusa’ in the English language. ‘Wabi’ denotes something aesthetic, imperfectly beautiful and natural. ‘Kusa’ means ‘grass’ or sometimes ‘plant’. Therefore it denotes something natural, beautiful, sweetly imperfect and involving plants)
I had some leftover aquasoil from a previous project.
I ground it into a fine powder in a mixer grinder. To that I mixed some live Sphagnum moss (to give body to the soil and help with moisture retention) and kneaded the mix into a dough with some water. I modelled the dough into a substrate ball and covered it with Christmas moss. I secured the moss to the substrate ball with sewing thread and proceeded with planting. I used a tweezer to make holes into the substrate in which i pushed in cutting os Staurogyne reopens. I also planted some Flame moss, Hydrocotyle tripartite and Micranthemum in a similar fashion. I also placed an Anubis’s nan petite on the substrate as the centre piece the wabi Kusa.
I took a cloche container and laid down a layer of aquarium gravel on which I placed the Wabi Kusa ball. I filled water into the container a little above the gravel layer and covered the container with the cloche top.
I might need to get myself a bigger container when the plants grow.
Timecodes
0:00 - Grinding the aqua soil
0:50 -Preparing the substrate ball
1:55 - adding moss to the substrate ball and securing with thread
3:26 - Planting
5:10 - Placing the planted wabi Kusa in a cloche container
5:40 - Filling water and closing up.
Material Buying Links :
Cloche container - amzn.to/3fcElCt
Aquasoil soil - amzn.to/3oIvxYj
Gravel - amzn.to/3fapcla
Dry Sphagnum moss - amzn.to/3fbTyUD
Aquatic moss - amzn.to/3vfkkki
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The urban nemophilist lives in the city but his heart and soul lives in the forest and wherever there is green.
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