The urban biosphere is thriving!!!!

My tiny urban herb pots are doing rather well of late. As closed systems, the limited ecologies of these pocket sized biospheres has been unfolding with astonishing speed. In one pot, the English variety thyme has grown significantly larger. It's thin green tendrils reach towards the "sunlight" of my CF lamps. At the sub-surface layer, the worms are making a fine living tilling the soil. Every time I water the pot, some worms inevitable get flooded out of their subterranean dens. To my surprise, a least one other form of animal life has developed a niche in this pot. A population of tiny gnats seems to have colonized the canopy tops of the thymes. Under the lamp light, one can see dozens of them hovering above the thyme "forest". These animals are truly small, a fruit-fly would easily be 20 times larger.

The other pot seems to have developed a more diverse ecology. For one thing, the Arugula is almost entirely gone, edged out by the faster growing Oregano plants. The mint plants seems to be holding out against the Oregano. One notices an interesting dynamic between these two plants which are now sharing the entire pot biosphere. The Oregano plants are comparatively fast growing, but needs higher amounts of light input to maintain itself. Whenever the Oregano leaves encounter shade, the leaves will turn yellow after awhile. And then a kind of fungus will begin growing on the leaves. Shortly thereafter the leaves would wither up and die. Interesting enough, the Mint leaves can endure partial shade without any problems. However the Mint grows much slower than the Oregano. So after a few weeks, the Oregano had expanded to partially surround the Mints. All along the Mint/Oregano border, one can see the browned edges of the Oregano leaves. Strangely enough, if one looks very closely at the fungus on the leaf edges, you sees tiny mite-like insects eating the fungus. At the ground layer, one can see tiny sow bugs going to and fro. The worms are of course doing well here, they seem to survive adequately anywhere.