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Pottery by Osa

I’m experimenting with olla . I’ve filled a low-fired (porous) pot that I made with water and buried it in the soil with my seedlings. This pot wasn’t made specifically to be an olla, but any porous pot should work. Ollas slowly release water into dry soil, and roots pull it in through osmosis.

Olla gardening conserves water, reduces irrigation frequency, promotes deep root growth, and supports , low-maintenance plant care.

@FaithfullJohn @potterybyosa It’s new to me as well, and might just be what I’m looking for! I have a border up against a row of leylandii in my neighbour’s garden, and they’ve taken all the water out of it; some ollas buried there might help rehydrate it.

@potterybyosa

TIL what ollas are! What a neat thing!

@potterybyosa
I was just thinking about ollas today! Gardening in January in New England is just extended dreaming. But making some ollas now would be a good pre-garden project, ready to use in spring.

@potterybyosa @handmade_ghost I’ve always wanted to try olla #gardening, this is a prompt to get going as I’m turning over a new bed. Thanks for the encouragement!

@potterybyosa Love this! I've been wanting to put ollas in my gardening. I do some of this with indoor plants that have high water needs.

@potterybyosa

I've used other pots and they work really well. None quite as beautiful as this though.

@potterybyosa

So nice. 💕
It reminds me of an experiment we did last summer with two clay pots of similar shape but different sizes to create a cooling system. The smaller pot was placed inside the larger one, and the gap was filled with sand. We watered the sandy frame and closed it with a lid. It really cooled down the items we stored inside, by evaporation.
Clay pots are the smartest invention ever. 💡

@piperef Yes! The pot-in-pot refrigerator, invented by Mohammed Bah Abba, in in the 1990s. In the US ceramics world, many have a prejudice against low-fired because it can harbor bacteria. But there are so many fascinating uses for it that can still benefit us today. Glad you are sharing this with your students.

I have also been doing olla gardening! Very useful in a dry climate.

@potterybyosa that's a very interesting concept I've never heard of before. It's neat because it kind of acts like a weed barrier as the same time as holding in water and nutrients. I need to get a setup for extracting clay and firing...

@JusticeArkansas @potterybyosa A pot inside a pot buried in the ground could be a good weed barrier, but the sizes of pots would need to be very different from each other in order to balance the water space with the root space.

@potterybyosa i used to bury regular clay pots with the saucer on top and a piece of cork at the bottom to keep water in, when i still had a garden. It's really amazing once you take them out to see all the roots that have covered the whole pot surface searching for humidity 🤩

@tsadiq @potterybyosa I use terra cotta watering spikes in my container plants all summer. It really is interesting at the end of summer to pull the spike out of the soil and see how the plant roots have engulfed it.

@potterybyosa
I'm interested to hear how this works! I've been seeing these in seed/garden catalogs recently and have been curious on coverage area and such.

@potterybyosa Today I learned about ollas for the first time!

@potterybyosa that's a cool gardening technique. i long to garden myself, trapped as i am in a shoebox apartment. maybe in a few months we'll move to the country and i can have a nice garden. i can see the advantages of this method of irrigation. what with the slow release of water and all.

@potterybyosa I love this! Thank you, that was interesting to learn about. 🪴

@potterybyosa This seems a really interesting concept. In my part of the Netherlands, the soil is mainly sand. My house is on a hill, so ground water is at >25m under ground level.

And summers are increasingly getting dryer.

Time to create a few patches to do some experimenting.

@potterybyosa that is amazing. Will share this idea with some friends living in an arid climate

@potterybyosa bravo 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 I did some small amphoras that will become gardening oyas too.