olla: water solution for hot, dry areas

In the morning before the kids get up for school, my hubby and I hang out in the living room drinking our coffee. He watches Northern Exposure while I surf Pinterest looking for ways to protect my plants from marauding deer or improve heavy clay soil.

In one of my searches, I ran across ways to better utilize water in the garden, something I’m working on. While we have an underground water system to use, currently, we’re only set up for overhead watering. This is inefficient, wasteful, and not always good for certain plants.

One idea I ran across was ollas. Ollas are clay pots that slowly release water to plants in dryer regions. Given that my current garden zone, 7b, has increased 2 degrees in about 12 years, I think being careful about water use in a warmer climate is pretty important. I also want to reduce my water bill whenever possible.

The first DIY olla idea I found used 2 clay pots glued together with caulk. That sounded good, but…I wasn’t ready to make them. Then I found a post by Lovely Greens on making ollas from one clay pot. That sounded better, and cheaper.

I found 8-inch clay pots at Ace Hardware for about $5.50. The 10-inch lids from Walmart were around $3.60. The mounting clay, also from Walmart, was about $3.60.

It took some experimenting with the mounting clay to figure out I could mush it together into a lump which I then flattened into a pancake. I recommend flattening out the edges rather than the middle to prevent holes in the middle. Cover the bottom of the pot with the pancake.

Then, cover the hole on the inside with a second pancake. Lay the pots on their sides when finished to prevent the mounting clay from coming off.

For my first set of 3, I dug holes between a rose, blueberries, and another rose. This bed is full sun, heavy clay, and not close to our watering system. My hope is to prevent these bushes from being too stressed during the dry, hot summer. I’m going to install another 6 or 7 ollas in this bed between grape vines.

We’re expecting rain on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. I’ll leave the lids off of the ollas, allowing them to fill and then slowly evaporate.