My new experiment with ollas

We have been getting more heat and drought every summer. Some plants are suffering and some are dying. The water bill is getting out of control.  What's a permaculture solution? Ollas.  They are clay pots, filled with water, but buried almost completely underground. The water seeps out through the unglazed clay slowly, where the roots want the moisture.  To buy one new is very expensive, like $100.  A cheaper solution? Glue two smaller clay pots together, or a pot and a saucer.  I saw about someone gluing the bottom of one with Gorilla Glue, so the water wouldn't just flow straight down but out the sides to the roots.  I liked the idea, but Gorilla Glue seems toxic.  I cemented the bottom instead.  Warning: don't try to pick up a bag of cement on a bike.  The smallest bag I could buy was 60 lbs.!  I first made three ollas for my half barrel planters, which dry out quickly.  A saucer on the bottom and the clay pot upside down on top.  The hole in the bottom is now the filler opening at top.  I glued the pot onto the saucer with a silicon caulking tube gun.This is what they looked like.  You can see the water line on the outside of the olla. Filling the olla with a funnel is a great way to go.

John S
PDX OR

Then the next task was to bury them next to the plants.  As I dug the soil, I could see that it was dry below.  Apparently, plants love getting consistent moisture below the surface level.    It's good to have a place to put the soil when you dig it out to make room for the olla.  Then you just carefully pack it back in, avoiding air pockets.  As you can see, I set the filler hole just above the soil line.  I haven't yet made a top to cover the hole, but I am working on it.  I am looking forward to seeing how the plants do when I go on vacation.  Here is what they look like in the half barrel planters:

JohN S
PDX OR

I just added the tops to the ollas today.  The materials are very inexpensive, and you may, perhaps, recognize some of them.  I have included both an "innie" and an "outie" to see which works better.  The top stops mosquitoes from accessing the water and it keeps out dirt, etc.  I may experiment with removing the top during a strong rain.  As a bonus point, you can even commemorate your favorite beverage!
John S
PDX OR

I just added these to the urban and suburban forums, because I realize that a lot of the people on permies are homesteaders on lots of acres and wouldn't have enough time to cover large territory with ollas.  They are very useful for people with more limited space, though.   Cities create an urban heat island, so the heat and drought affect them even more.  That makes ollas all the more useful.

John S
PDX OR

John, pretty please could we have an update on how your experiment has been going.

Yes, if you have acres of land, this may not be practical, but even then, sometimes a person wants to get a few specific trees to not die while getting established, and ollas seem to fit Mark Shepard's updated approach, "strategic, total, utter, neglect."

I tried some commercial olla's that utilized a hard plastic feed tube to each olla. Here is my version that uses an electrical bulkhead fitting and a pot and tray siliconed together. The feed line is daisy chained and goes to a reservoir that keeps the olla filled without having to attend them.  I use 1/4 inch air brake line that is secured 1/2 to 1/4 of way into the olla. The olla keeps full and feeds when the level drops below the end of the hose. As with the commercial ollas I find that a 16 inch diameter irrigated circle is what I encounter. These are 6 inch pots. I bury below ground level to protect from freezing.

This is a cool idea. Take it another level try terracotta pipe you could even run heating during the winter with a simple rocket stove or fire heat source and give plants heat during the winter. Greens and brassicas and even keep tropical fruit trees alive during the winter.

I tried one of these on The Pile this summer.  It was just an 8" pot with a cork in the bottom and a plastic plant tray over the top.  Rather a half-baked experiment, really.  The YouTube video that was my inspiration said the pots needed to be dug up before frost since frost activity would break them.    Has anyone had experience of this?

I noticed that both the new bee balm and the old peppermint headed right for the pot.  The lavender looked perkier too.  Even with the cover, I had to skim off the pill bugs a few times.

I like the idea of burying the pot hole side up and just pouring water in.  Can the open side of the pot be placed directly on the soil, or does it need to be sealed somehow?  If I can leave the pot buried year round, this experiment will be worth another try.

Ellen Morrow wrote:I  The YouTube video that was my inspiration said the pots needed to be dug up before frost since frost activity would break them.    Has anyone had experience of this?

The ollas use "capillary action" to wick the water from inside that pot, through the wall of the pot, and to the soil.

Water expands when it freezes, thus breaking apart the clay pots from inside the walls.

Ecosystem is everything: a) frequent freeze thaw cycles will be more damaging than few cycles,
b) a dry or almost dry pot, won't get the same expansion pressure as a saturated pot,
c) just digging up the pots won't help - they need to have time to dry before freezing, and stay dry for the freezing weather.
d) and they need to be stored where they won't get broken!

So this is a major issue in some ecosystems.  I have tried similar just using a plastic bottle so I'm watering under the soil surface, but plastic solar degrades to fast, so I no longer do that either.  Having punky wood in a bed seems to be a good way to help even out wet/dry cycles.

Yeah the frost thing is a real concern with unglazed terracotta. I've had regular pots crack just from sitting outside in wet winters, so buried ones holding water would be worse. If you're in a mild frost area I'd probably just drain them right down before the cold and mulch heavily over them, but for anything with hard freezes I'd pull them to be safe.

Currently I let the reservoir go dry at the end of season so there is no standing water in the ollas as winter comes on.  the ones in the greenhouse have been there for 3 yrs and no sign of deterioration from freeze thaw cycles. The outside raised bed trial is going on to year two and heavily mulched appear to be ok, so far. This bed of peppers has 6 ollas in it. The reservoir is on top left of the bed and is a marine fuel tank of 20 gallons. Depending on temp and humidity the 20 gallons lasts about 4 weeks. Chipmunks are an ever present issue so the raised beds are armored with the hardware cloth. but that gives me a table top for seed starting in the early season. The shade cloth keeps the chippers out but when thrown or rolled back gives access to the bed.