Exploring the idea of “Ollas”

Watering your garden and plants when there is not that much water available can be an annoying experience. You’d really like to give them the water they need, but there just isn’t enough around. All the love and energy that goes into them seems to evaporate into thin air, kind of literally.
Looking at different ways of recycling water, I came across ollas. The concept just makes so much sense, that I couldn’t not try it out.

So we went out to get a few non-glazed clay pots and I started the preparations. Instead of explaining the entire process in-depth here, just watch this.

I will explain a bit though, with a few pictures.
First of all, make sure that you have all items “working”. What I mean by this, is that the old silicon tube from a long long time ago, might just not be that fluid any more (not that mine was, I mean really, that wouldn’t happen to ME, right?!). Mine was completely solid! So I had to postpone the work till I got a new tube of silicon. But then, it was a really fun project.

Make sure to scrub the pots clean, especially the inside, as that’s where the water should be able to pass through. Then, drill a hole into the top pot (if necessary) and glue both pots together, as you could see in the video and on the pictures below. To spread the silicon nicely, you can either use a tissue or simply get your fingers dirty a bit. Using your fingers directly will give you a much better feel as to where it might need a bit more silicon. When that’s done, store it in a cool dry place, with a big stone on top of it.

I let them dry for a whole day, to make very sure that they’re as sealed as can be. Then I filled them all with water and let them rest for a few hours, to see if any water was leaking through the seal. When I first filled them with water, the water seemed to be going down quite quickly, which I attributed to leakage, but then I topped them all up again and the level stayed. It may take a while till the pot itself absorbs some water. It’s already working, you can see the little droplets at the bottom!!!

(As you can see, I needed a funnel to fill them because the holes are a bit small, so for the next ollas I’ll be drilling bigger holes to facilitate the filling.)

Now all that needs to be done, is to put them into the ground by the roses and where the tomatoes will be planted.

The rose plant we had wanted to “olla-fy” didn’t have enough depth around it to plant the olla, so we opted to do it by an other one. Basic instructions: Dig a hole deep enough and pop the olla in, then fill the space around it with soil, leaving a bit of the olla peaking out. You’ll want to cover the hole with flat stone, to keep dirt out and evaporation to a minimum.

Here’s what the rose one looks like:

For the ones dedicated to the tomato patch, check the tomato seed2seed page 🙂