Ollas!!!!

I am so excited!

I am finally realizing one of my long-time projects.

I may have mentioned that at one time I grew 100+ tomato and pepper plants. I grew every heirloom tomato I could get my hands on, mostly to see which ones I liked. I grew many different kinds of peppers, including my beloved chiltepin. In addition, I grew potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, radishes, etc, etc; the list goes on and on. That summer, I became a slave to my small produce farm because you see, in August, when the sun in Kansas burns all your hopes and dreams and temperatures hover above 100F, you can almost hear, almost, if you listen carefully, all your plants begging for water. "Water! Please!" they implore; and you must oblige, lest all that work you did in the spring is for nothing.

Now, I have seen people grow thousands of plants. Yes, they grow these many plants in carefully planned operations in covered structures with automated watering systems. These people spend a lot of money and generally sell their produce. Mine was more of an organically (no pun intended) grown situation. So no, I didn't have a fancy watering system; I didn't even have drip hoses.

At that time, I read about an ancient, tried and true method of watering plants used in many parts of the world from the Middle East to Europe to pre-Colombian America: Ollas (pronounced sort of like Oh-yeah)

AN OLLA A DAY KEEPS YOUR PLANT ALIVE

Ollas are vessels made of terracotta clay, unglazed and fired. The fact that they are unglazed guarantees that water will flow from the inside of the olla to the outside. You bury these things next to your plant(s), fill them with water, and, because the plant is no dummy, the plant will send its roots to attach themselves to the outside of the ollas and obtain that life-giving water. All you have to do then is enjoy your summer vacation knowing that when you come back, your plant(s) will still be alive.

Fantastic. The problem at the time was that no one in my area knew of them much less carried them. In fact, I couldn't even find them online. So I found a pottery place and enrolled in a class. Turned out that making an olla using a turn-wheel is advanced stuff and I failed. Utterly failed. With my dreams dashed against the rocks of my incompetence, I abandoned the idea of using ollas altogether.

In due time I learned to make self-watering containers. Those worked great but at the end I had problems with them too. They were complicated to make and plastic totes and plastic five gallon buckets become brittle in the sun. Eventually, I stopped growing plants completely.

Before I continue, I must tell you that recently I learned about Leon and his self-watering containers. Leon is an old guy living in Oklahoma and he has simplified self-watering containers. If you grow plants, you want to watch his videos here.

I believe that ollas are the best system for watering plants outside of a commercial watering system. For one, they are made of clay and not plastic. Ollas won't end up in the belly of some poor whale. When your olla breaks, you can just leave it in the dirt and it will return from whence it came. No fuss, no mas. For another, when a plant attaches to the olla, it sucks water as it needs it, minimizing the risk of over-watering. You can make an olla as large or as small as you need it to be. The largest drawback to ollas is that if you don't know how to make one or don't have access to a firing kiln you have to rely on the expensive ollas already made and sold online.

We have finally come to the part where I tell you why I am so excited. After my failed attempt at making ollas on a turn table, a woman online told me of a different way to make them; an easier way. All I needed then, was a place that would fire my ollas. I didn't have a place; or so I thought. There was a place in town that would fire my ollas but I didn't know it. Today I found the place!. They even sold me the clay and the beautiful lady at the counter even reminded me how to make them the easy way. 
The 50lb lump of wet clay sits in my garage even as I write this. By my estimation, I should have ollas ready to go by this summer. Oh-yeah!!!

Thank you for stopping by!!!

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