Clay Pipes & Ollah Pots
You can save massive amounts of water in your garden by installing clay pipes and Ollah pots.
Clay Pipes & Ollah Pots
“A pipe 10 to 20 inches long with an outer diameter of 3 to 4 inches and 0.3-inch walls would be a good size to start with. Sections can be made with slip joints that are easily sealed in the field, or they can be made with necks”
— Gardening with Less Water: Low-Tech, Low-Cost Techniques; Use up to 90% Less Water in Your Garden by David A. Bainbridge
Ollah Pots
Here are examples of using Ollah pots for growing melon
“The steps in setting up such as a strategy are as follows: 1. Obtain (hopefully from locally produced sources) unglazed pottery or terra-cotta vessels that have been fired below 1,800 ˚ F (1,000 ˚ C) and are capable of holding anywhere from 0.75 gallon to 2 gallons of water. Squat, pumpkin-shaped pots with thick flared rims are ideal, but many shapes can be used. 2. Select a site—preferably with sandy rather than dense clay soil—and dig a hole twice as deep and three times as wide as the pottery vessel you wish to bury. 3. Mix compost, sand, biochar, and aged manure in the lower third of the hole. Then place a flat piece of clay, terra-cotta, or ceramic (a saucer, drainage tray, or broken piece of another vessel) at the base of the hole, immediately beneath where you wish to place the pot. 4. Position the pot on the saucer or tray to impede water loss from the bottom, with the height of the pot allowing its neck and top rim to emerge an inch or two above the land surface. 5. Fill the pot full of fresh water—add no fertilizer or manure to the water. If possible, fill the vessel with harvested rainwater from a nearby cistern or storage tank. Place a cap, lid, or small piece of tile on top of it to reduce water loss. 6. Plant seeds of garden crops with fibrous root systems—pumpkins, squashes, melons, watermelons, jack beans, horseradish, peppers, and tomatoes—roughly an inch or two away from the outside of the ollas. Immediately water and fertilize with manure tea, compost tea, or fish emulsion. 7. There is no fixed timing for refilling the olla; check the water level in the vessel frequently, and refill on demand. Similarly, replenish nutrients in the soil around the pot in relation to plant growth rates. Weed as needed. 8. Mark or build low barriers around the area where the pot is buried, so that humans or other animals do not trample and damage the olla. 9. Do not expect buried pitcher irrigation to be ideal for all crops or settings. Few vegetables (and virtually no grains can) accommodate the spacing it requires. 10. Seek out cheaper but more durable pots. The current cost for custom-designed ollas for buried pitcher irrigation ($ 16 to $ 30 US) makes this technique prohibitively expensive on any scale for low-income gardeners and farmers.”
— Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land: Lessons from Desert Farmers on Adapting to Climate Uncertainty by Gary Paul Nabhan
https://a.co/8igwQEV
“Dr. Kraenzel then described to me his visit with his student to her father’s farm outside of Juarez, Chihuahua, on the remote edges of an enormous mass of sand known as the Samalyuca Dunes. There, in what Kraenzel referred to as the yonland, her father grew thousands of pounds of watermelons with a minimum of water at his disposal. To do so, he employed little more than inexpensive, unglazed clay vessels known as ollas, a bag of home-saved seeds, and some plastic water containers that he could fill at a nearby well and carry by mule or pickup truck to where the ollas were buried in the sand up to their necks. From the seeds he planted in the sand surrounding the ollas, he harvested a salable crop of melons each year, despite the fact that the area received less than 9 inches of rain in an average year, and often suffered summer temperatures as high as 110 ˚ F (43 ˚ C). I later learned from desert restoration ecologist David Bainbridge that melon yields can reach 25 metric tons per hectare using just 2 cubic centimeters of “olla irrigation” per hectare. That translates to nearly 11 tons of melons per acre on less than an acre-inch of water delivered through the pores of clay pots! “This kind of innovative approach to water conservation accomplished by peasant farmers,” Dr. Kraenzel confided in me, “should humble those of us who call ourselves scientists . . . It’s the kind of traditional knowledge that we should take keen interest in, and document to the extent that is possible.””
— Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land: Lessons from Desert Farmers on Adapting to Climate Uncertainty by Gary Paul Nabhan
https://a.co/8igwQEV