| As a resident of Southern California, I am acutely aware of the water used in my garden. It's a scarce resource, and yet the ground is bone dry and my plants won't grow unless I water them frequently. That's why an Agroinnovations podcast on Clay Pot Irrigation caught my attention. The clay pots are called ollas ("OY-yas"). You bury your olla up to its neck in the soil, fill it with water, and cover it with a rock. The water then seeps through the olla into the soil, providing water to the plants. Over time, plants grow a thick web of roots around the olla so they can draw the water out on an as-needed basis. Thus, your plant gets all of the water it needs but you save water overall because you aren't spraying it on the soil surface where it can run off or evaporate. Brilliant!
My ollas
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| I bought 2 ollas from East Central Ministries, the organization recommended by Agroinnovations. On their site, the ollas are under Urban Farm on their table of contents down the left side. I've since contacted them to clarify that YES, the ollas are 100% LEAD-FREE and to also ask what size ollas to use. Here is what they told me:
Squash - 1.5 gallon size
Cucumber/zucchini - 1 or 1.5 gallons
Eggplant & peppers - 1/2 gallon
Beets - 1/2 gallon
Tomatoes - 3/4 gallon or larger
In the case of something like beets, you would bury the 1/2 gallon olla and then plant beets all the way around it so several beets would share one olla. Likewise, 2 tomatoes can easily share one 1 gallon olla. Having 2 or more plants share an olla is a great idea because it means you'll do less buying, less digging, and less refilling ollas.
My ollas came in the mail yesterday. I naively took a guess at which olla sizes to buy and chose a 1.5 qt size and a 1/2 gallon size. I put one of them in with my tomatoes, partially because the plant is still small so I can confidently dig without disturbing roots, and partially because that particular bed has very loose, fluffy soil, so digging won't be too difficult. I dug my hole... probably a little bit more shallow than I should have... and buried the olla. Then I filled it with water and covered it with a rock, as you can see below.
Buried olla, in between 2 tomato plants
Olla covered with a rock
I went out to check on the water level today and I was shocked to find the olla only 1/4 full. My little tomatoes are thirsty! My boyfriend and I have discussed putting the other olla near our pumpkins, which look droopy every single day, even if we water them heavily the night before. They perk up after I water them during the day, but since I do so around noon (when the pumpkins are looking their droopiest) a lot of the water evaporates. The only downsides to giving them my 2nd olla is that a) it's not big enough to meet their needs so I'll probably have to buy a new one and re-do it and b) the soil is rock-solid where the pumpkins are. I'm planning to start by breaking up some of the soil on the surface and mixing in ground up coconut husk to see if that can make it absorb water a little bit better. |
