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Olla Irrigation on Large Scale: Is it feasible?

Ryan M Miller

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As of the beginning of this month, I am participating in an internship program at a small urban farm affiliated with OEFFA in the Cincinnati area. At the current farm I'm working at for my intern, the farmer is using a drip irrigation system along with a set of berms and swales to mitigate farm runoff.

In past threads on the permies forum, the drawbacks of using drip irrigation have been brought up, so I've been looking for possible alternatives. One such alternative might be burrying ollas in the ground. Given the amount of time and energy required to throw and fire each olla pot for irrigation, I'm wondering if they can still be a viable means of irrigation in the humid climate of the Ohio river valley where water is not particularly expensive. Most videos and journal articles I've seen on using ollas for plants focus on small-scale use in arid climates, so the information is not entirely applicable to the climate where I live. I'd like to know if any members of this forum have had any experience using ollas on a larger scale than a small home garden and if they actually save any water when used in a humid climate.

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Ryan M Miller

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By the way, I forgot to mention that the two farm fields used for cultivation have soil that was originally a red-orange clay. Since these fields also used to be residential lots, they also have chunks of gravel and urbanite in the soil that has to be removed on a regular basis while planting. The gravel and clay might be a hindrance when burrying ollas in this urban area.

Mercy Pergande

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This is very much not my lane, BUT my first thought when I read this post was the Persian qanat ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat ) or kariz systems where they made systems of covered channels to move water between wells or aquifers and fields in a covered system to prevent evaporation. With the clay you have to work with (and if it's like the red clay I grew up with in Georgia, it would hold water pretty well without any firing) would an alternative to fired ollas be a less intensive clay covered channel system to run water into the areas needing water? Or some variation on the theme...

Again, I am not knowledgable about the particulars of farm irrigation, but the concepts of ollas and qanat and clay connected when I read your post so I thought I'd mention it in case it sparked any ideas.

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Ollas need to be lifted and dried out and kept dry if you get freezing weather, and they're fairly bulky to store, so that may affect your plans. I use fake-it ollas using a terracotta plant pots with a thrift store plate over the top. It's a lot more work filling each one that simply turning on a tap to the drip hoses - and in fact many of those are automated system.

That said, I would keep looking for an alternative because a friend used a drip tape system and the plastic waste was horrible!

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Hi Ryan,
I too was impressed with the ollas, but I think in a cold climate where things freeze they may not be a viable option due to the amount of work to dig them up every fall and replace in the ground every spring.

Having said that, there are some options that use less plastic but still give some of the benefits of automatic watering. There was a company called something like WaterPots out of Australia that made a 5 gallon container that hooked to a string of small ollas via a rubber hose and some plastic fittings on the top of the olla. Still some plastic, but the container was metal and the hose was rubber and the ollas were clay. It was gravity fed, and looked like a pretty cool system. I have not been able to find them again for a few years, so I think they went out of business. But I would imagine you could probably design something like that yourself.

I had a thought about unglazed clay pipe being used as a continuous horizontal olla... but I live in a fairly wet climate and I do not have access to a bunch of clay... so I never really experimented to see if it would be feasible. Sounds like that Persion thing would be easier, but different than an Olla.

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William Bronson

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I live in Cincinnati and I've been exploring the use of ollas in my gardening.
This is mostly to avoid wasting rainwater.
Cincinnati water has chloramine and flouride, which are relatively hard to get rid of.

I think any soil that is liable to grow a crop will accept watering from an olla.

I am making ollas by casting mortar into Gatorade bottles.
I plan on supplying each olla from 1/4" drip irrigation line.
Each line will be plumbed into salvaged garden hose.
I buy barbed fittings from menards that let me peice together irrigation lines from discarded garden hose.
The hose is reused, the fittings last a long time, the bottles are reused, and altogether they minimize how much drip line is needed, so maybe they could be an acceptable use of plastic in your situation.

Even if you are going to use city water , an open top tank that fills up via a float valve can minimize the use of materials in the system.
Gravity fed water distribution is relatively low pressure, so your materials can be less robust and still last longer.

What neighborhood are the plots in?
There maybe nearby growers that have resources you can tap into.
Funkes greenhouses, Tikkun Farm, Growing Value Nursery, Village Green community gardens, and Growing Trade Pet and Plant are among the organizations and businesses that are community minded.
There is at least one composting business that works with local urban farms as well.

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Ben Zumeta

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I would think of an unlined pond or mulched swale as being similar to a giant olla in function.

This is all just my opinion based on a flawed memory

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Ryan M Miller

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William Bronson wrote:
What neighborhood are the plots in?
There maybe nearby growers that have resources you can tap into.
Funkes greenhouses, Tikkun Farm, Growing Value Nursery, Village Green community gardens, and Growing Trade Pet and Plant are among the organizations and businesses that are community minded.
There is at least one composting business that works with local urban farms as well.

The farm owner currently does not feel comfortable with revealing the locations of her farm plots after several encounters with hostile neighbors who where against the idea of a for-profit urban farm in their neighborhood. If you want to know the location of the farm plots, you can send me a purple moosage as long as you and the staff on this forum promise not to leak the locations of the farm plots.

William Bronson

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I totally get it, having been harassed by neighbors quite a bit.
It's not even about disruption to their lives,merely doing something different than everone else is enough to trigger their antagonism.

I don't need to know anything more, and frankly you are probably more keyed into the local scene than I am.

On a different note what kind of crops are the focus of the plots?
What is the market being sold to?
Aside from the restaurants and the farmers markets, value added products seem to be the focus of small commercial growers here.

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Ryan M Miller

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William Bronson wrote:
On a different note what kind of crops are the focus of the plots?
What is the market being sold to?
Aside from the restaurants and the farmers markets, value added products seem to be the focus of small commercial growers here.

The owner primarily sells to local families and single residents through her CSA and farm box subscriptions. She also sells some of her produce to a food bank called The Caring Place. She used to sell to some local restaurants and and some farmers' markets, but the customers too often tried to haggle for an unteasonably low price for her produce (Keep in mind that restaurants run on razor-thin margins) and she often ended up exhausted after selling at farmers' markets.

Due to limited consumer knowledge in the Cincinnati area about perennial vegetables, she primarily grows annual vegetables with some strawberries and raspberries to supplement her farm boxes. So far, I've seen her grow the following crops for sale: arugula, beets, bok-choy, German chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla), chives, collards, comfrey (Symphytum officinale, cucumbers, dill, eggplant, egyptian walking onions, garlic, garlic chives, Lacinato kale (B. oleracea), red Russian kale (B. napus), true lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), Romaine lettuce, mint (Mentha sp.), asian mustard mix (Brassica rapa), brown mustard (Brassica juncea), okra, sweet peppers, chili peppers, raspberries (Rubus idaeus), rosemary, sage (Salvia officinale), true spinach (Spinacia oleracea), butternut squash (Cucurbita moshata), delicata squash (C. pepo), zucchini squash (C. pepo), strawberries (Fragaria × ananassa), swiss chard, paste tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes.
I'm also trying to convince her to grow perpetual spinach chard (Beta vulgaris) next season since it's the closest crop in flavor and texture to true spinach that can handle the hot Summer weather typical of the Ohio valley region in Cincinnati. Customers often ask for spinach during the middle of Summer in spite of the fact that spinach can not easily be grown during the hot Summers of Ohio. She can only grow spinach for a few short weeks in early spring and again towards the end of Fall.

Ryan M Miller

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I've spent some time thinking about ollas again, and the best solution I can think of is buying a soil auger that matches the diameter of the ollas that need to be buried and then custom-building the ollas to be cylindrical-shaped in stead of the traditional pear-shape to make the ollas easier to set into the ground. Unfortunately, most ollas still come in the usual pear-shape and I still don't know if this shape offers any benefit over a cylindrical olla. This sounds like something I could try throwing on a wheel from the wild clay that I've dug up from my neighborhood.

Ryan M Miller

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I spent some time looking for examples of cylindrical ollas online, and so far, I've found at least one small supplier of this type of olla. I can't guarantee that the supplier will remain in business over the next five years, so I'm including a link to the Google archive of the page in case the original link rots.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3A%2F%2Fecogro.com%2Fproduct%2Folla-irrigation%2F

Robert Ray

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I just recieved my commercialy produced ollas from "Thirsty Earth". I plan on using these in our community greenhouse to monitor water useage in differing irrigation experiments. Consistent size and being able to use a measurable amount of water for data collection. The ability to daisy chain the ollas and fill them from a single reservoir of known quantity will make that data collection much easier.
https://thethirstyearth.com/

THIRSTY-EARTH-1.JPG

A Thirsty Earth clay olla designed to be used with a drip irrigation system

THIRSTY-EARTH-2.JPG

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Wow "drip irrigation olla emitters" are so cool. Thank you so much for putting this on my radar. At $10.00 each they cost alot more than the usual $0.20. drip emitters, but I still think they are super cool.

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Robert Ray

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There are several ways to charge these ollas, drip emitters being one of them. I'll be using a reservoir with a known quantity of water and monitor irrigation usage to fill the ollas as they become empty.

Our inability to change everything should not stop us from changing what we can.

Jay Angler

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Robert Ray wrote:There are several ways to charge these ollas, drip emitters being one of them. I'll be using a reservoir with a known quantity of water and monitor irrigation usage to fill the ollas as they become empty.

I'd be interested in knowing:
1. Whether when filling a series of them from your reservoir, whether the whole string fills reasonably evenly?
2. Whether you find that they empty reasonably evenly?
3. Just how easy it is to know if one has run out of water - will you be continuously refilling, or refilling as you check and see they're empty?

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Robert Ray

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My experiment will have a valve at the end of the run, as the ollas fill once water trickles out of the valve I'll know all ollas are filled. A tee at the top of the ollas won't redirect the water from olla number one until it is filled once it fills it hits the tee and goes to olla number two on down the line. These ollas have a 1/4 inch hard line that connects with push in connections exactly like used in air lines for air bags, air shocks brake lines. Hey I'm open to to any suggestions since I haven't begun the install yet.

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Jay Angler

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Robert Ray wrote: Hey I'm open to to any suggestions since I haven't begun the install yet.

I've only used "fake it" ollas and have mixed results with them, so sorry, I have nothing useful to suggest, only questions which might trigger ideas at best!

What is worse, we've got very hard water, so many things like this get their pores filled and stop working. In my dreams, I'll have a large tank of rainwater to help the garden, and not have to use the well! Currently, the location of things, doesn't work to do that. We tend to have most of our rain in Nov/Dec and need the water in July/Aug!

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I could do away with the runs, end valve by running a return line to the reservoir.

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S Bengi

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I think about 12 is recommended for a standard home-size 4ft by 8ft bed.
I suppose that means means that about 36 is needed for a farmstead sized 100sqft "raised bed"

I can see plants in the spinach family using alot less water than say tomatoes. I look forward to your empirical data about which beds use the most water.

Iterations are fine, we don't have to be perfect
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Ryan M Miller

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Robert Ray wrote:I just recieved my commercialy produced ollas from "Thirsty Earth". I plan on using these in our community greenhouse to monitor water useage in differing irrigation experiments. Consistent size and being able to use a measurable amount of water for data collection. The ability to daisy chain the ollas and fill them from a single reservoir of known quantity will make that data collection much easier.
https://thethirstyearth.com/

That olla is definitely cylindrical. There should be no problem drilling a hole for it with a soil auger. I hope soil augers come in standard sizes. That would make it easier to determine what size olla to get.

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I installed them in a raised bed with new soil so it was east to dig the placement hole with just my hand. I'm not at the greenhouse right now but I will post pictures. I ran the initial install with t's and an elbow at the last olla. On the top of the ollas you see a bleeder screw, on the initial fill I did have to open up that last bleeder screw to speed up the fill. Running a vent line back to the reservoir would eliminate that need. On a long run where that would be problematic I think I' d put in a push button bleeder/pressure relief valve on the last olla. In my experiment I'll use a motorcycle fork vent bleeder valve. They're 5mm 1.0 thread pitch so slightly larger than the factory screw. Re-tapping that last olla will be no problem. Should the ollas be at ground level pushing that button with a hoe/ tool would be easy to bleed the run without bending over or using a screwdriver with the original screw. I am going to run the vent tube to the reservoir in the final install but still fiddling to see how these work.

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Robert Ray

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Here is my use of 4 of the "Thirsy Earth Olla" the bed is 8 x 4 ft app. the reservoir on top is a 20 gallon tank and is gravity feeding the ollas. I did run a vent tube to the top of the reservoit so one wouldn't have to bleed the system. The two ollas pictured are a little closer than suggested. I think that three would have been suffucient. No other watering has been given to the peppers other than that from the ollas. I am topping the peppers to keep them under the beds table height. If used in a row the size of these ollas would be perfect. I did not mulch this time.

olla-pepper1.JPG

Thirsty earth olla plumbed into a greenhouse bed

olla-pepper-2.JPG

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I used the "Thirsty Eart Ollas" in that pepper bed and the season is coming to an end. No additional water than what was in the 25 gallon tank for the season. I am really sold on ollas. No mulch and that might have even reduced water usage more. The ability to connect to a water source and have continuous irrigation is a plus for me and a time saver.
My self watering beds work great too but I always have a fear of liner puncture. Repair of a punctured liner would be labor intensive.
The Thirsty Earth ollas cost app 10.00 which would be prohibitive for me at scale. Many vids on folks making ollas from terra cotta pots. Here is my new olla made from a 4 inch pot and a waterproof electrical bulkhead fitting. I'll run a longer 1/4 inch hose so I can bury the olla deeper. Buying in bulk, pot, tray and fitting I'm into the olla @ 2.00 each.

thirsty-earth-olla-and-mine.JPG

olla-from-side.JPG

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Jay Angler

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The downside of using regular terra cotta pots is the width to height ratio. One year I was doing some end of season browsing and found some marked down pots that were this shape:

If you're planning on buying a quantity, looking around for that sort of shape might be worth a bit of time.

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My hope is that buy using a 4 inch length of hose out the top and burying the olla deeper than traditionally the water will be focused at the roots. There should be no need for the top of the soil being dampened. Mulching keeping the soil cool.
Looking at the bulbous traditional design the only reason for the neck is to fill the olla hopefully I will be bypassing that neck and need for a tall olla by using the buried feed line with a constant fill. Focusing on deep watering. The 4 inch long 1/4 inch dia. stem pipe the only thing sticking up. The olla being buried deeper protecting the vessel. Will the feed vessel being higher add pressure to the porous vessel and force a wider footprint of water?

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William Bronson

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Hey Ryan, are you still at this farm?

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I had a thought that a section of bamboo might make a good Olla. I can't find anyone using bamboo that way but it seems easy, cheap and natural enough that it would be worth a try. Bamboo might not last as long as pottery but self sourced bamboo would be basically free.

I imagine using a single section of a large diameter piece of bamboo or two sections of a thinner culm with the middle node punched out. The bamboo could be inserted vertically or if roots are shallow... perhaps nearer to horizontal but with enough tilt to hold water.

The research I have found suggests that bamboo is not very porous and might act more like a bucket than an olla. It might require some treatment to pass water appropriately. That could be a heat or steam treatment, a soak or abradement of the tough waxy outer coating. Compared to firing clay for a traditional olla... any of that processing like that for bamboo would be less energy intensive.

I struck out in my searching but maybe someone out there has done it or seen it done?

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Some bamboo is treated with heat via steam to increase its structural integrity, the lignin's bonding tighter so depending on the species kinda the opposite of what you are going for. Would a below grade drip emitter on a buried loofa hold water better than soil at root level?

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I wonder if someone could or make a product similar to a septic system infiltrator that could run under garden pathways.

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Robert Ray wrote:I wonder if someone could or make a product similar to a septic system infiltrator that could run under garden pathways.

I know someone who did essentially that but under his perennial beds that took the water from his grey-water artificial wetland and distributed it through a set of valves to various different beds on a rotation.

However, he used plastic, not clay. I have seen pictures of horizontal clay pipes used for "olla" irrigation for market gardening in dry areas. It appeared that these were lifted and stacked at the end of every season, which is a lot of soil disturbance.

The pure concept of ollas is that they seep the water as the plants need it. However, if I just wanted to get water below ground level so I have less evaporation and less tendency to germinate weed seeds, I have used plant pots with holes in the bottom to do so. Large diameter bamboo would be great for that job. Calibrate about how long a piece of bamboo you need for the quantity of water, then drill a bunch of small holes in the lower foot that will be buried in the soil. Plant it beside the target plants at the depth you want it. If you make it taller, it will be quicker to fill with a hose or watering can as you wouldn't have to stoop. Surface watering is both wasteful and weed generating in my climate, so I'm always looking for ways to get the water exactly where I need it. However, we've also got highly mineralized water, so something like bamboo which is ephemeral and replaceable sounds great. Unfortunately, my climate won't grow the diameter of bamboo that would be needed. And yes, any nodes would need to be punched out.

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Was thinking a smaller version of a septic field infiltrator. I have corrugated 4-inch drain pipe that I run water through in some beds.

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I've been wondering how to build an olla "trough".
It would run the length of a raised bed and kept full with a float valve.
I think some variation on ferrocement might work this.

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We make and sell cylindracal Ollas, for exactly the reason Ryan is looking for them; they deliver a lot of water without taking up a lot of garden space, and are easy to bury using a post hole digger.

Here's a link: www onewintrynightollas.com

Check us out!
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I just did a search on permy's to find an Ola thread to send to a friend as we were chatting about the greenhouse they're building.

I was specifically looking for Will's Thread about creating Olas with sport drink bottles and mortar. But I also found this thread which is fascinating as well.

Would sections of soaker hose work for sub irrigation around plants? Whether a chunk of hose on a tee fitting or just a hose with sections of Soaker buried in the ground?

Since the water is going from the inside out, the soaker hose sections would probably not get clogged? It would probably also survive cold Winters better than clay, perhaps discontinuing water in the fall so that the hose empties out. Or heck, adding some insulation on top of the area where the hose runs to protect it and insulate it.

Matt McSpadden

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Location: Central Maine (Zone 5a)

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posted 1 month ago

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It is possible to water your plants with a soaker hose underground... but they work a little different than ollas.

A soaker hose requires pressurized water to get the water from the inside to the outside. This requires either a pressure tank, or else a gravity feed system at the right height.

Ollas use capillary action to release the water to the soil. This is more of a set it and forget it option.

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