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[Joe]

Hello, I was wondering if someone tried irrigating their vegetable gardens using Ollas?

It looks pretty efficient but I would like to have some feedback from others before trying to implement it.

“Because water seeps through the walls of an unglazed olla, these vessels can be used to irrigate plants : the olla is filled with water, which gradually seeps into the soil to water the roots of the plant. It is an efficient method, since little water is lost to evaporation or run-off.”

Cheers,

Joe

[Fatzo]

Hi

I tried that and it went swell. I was looking for ways to save work and in my place it can get really hot during the day you d’ont want to be out and water not good for the plants and not good for me either

here’s a picture of what I did

You can see we made the ollas locally with a guy who was good at clay stuff. He made them a bit too wide at the mouth but it was ok since it made them easy to clean when stuff fell in it

then we put them out and tried to get them level

after that we added lots and lots of dirt because we wanted to raise the soil up plus we could add manure at the same time.

In the end we still added soil until the middle of the neck so the larger part was really underground.

It worked really well, we could feel the plants thriving even if it was super hot outside. But I think the clay we used let water seep out too fast, we had to refill them every two or three days.

We got a lot of eggplant and the growing was really thick, so yeah it works

This was three years ago, but we moved since so I don’t know how it turned out now.

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Loving the season!

[Joe]

Great, thanks for the tips. It also adds to the look of the vegetable garden in my opinion.

I’ll start setting things up so I can benefit from this next year.

Do you have to unearth them during the cold season to avoid breaking the ollas? If yes, just storing them in a dry space is all it takes ?

[Fatzo]

Hey Joe, I agree just looking at them do all the watering work is already half the fun.

In my place it never froze so I can’t say but I think it depends on how cold it gets

Since they’re underground it shouldn’t freeze there unless your in siberia or stuff

After all, it’s a hassle to dig them out and put them back in and for me I’m sure to break one or two on the way to the shed. Why not just put an upside-down tin can over the top to keep water out or a plastic bottle to make a mini-greenhouse or even both ? That would keep it from freezing with no effort or risk

maybe others have more experience with this in cold areas but that’s what I would do!

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Loving the season!

[Fatzo]

or maybe add hay on top of it after plugging the top

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Loving the season!

[Author]

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