I attended a two-day "Introduction to Permaculture" course over the weekend and came back with a wealth of ideas and inspirations surrounding sustainable living.
One of them was the olla, a simple, low-tech water saving device for gardening.
An olla is an unglazed pot that you bury neck-deep into a mound of soil. The pot is filled with water which very slowly percolates through the porous clay walls. Veggies are then planted adjacent to the ollas. It is said that 90-100% of the water placed in the olla is eventually absorbed by the plants, whose roots hug the outside of the pot.
Attaching a drip irrigation system to your ollas is also an option.
The ollas can be purchased through Peddler's Wagon for $20-$25/each, OR
You supposedly can make your own "diamond-shaped" olla by gluing together two flower pots with silicone or acrylic caulk and then plugging up the drain on one end, OR
You can go the super low-tek route by using a 1-gallon plastic milk jug with some small holes punched into it. The drawbacks here are that some folks are not thrilled to burying plastic into their vegetable gardens, and they tend to not be as durable as the ollas, which have been known to last for decades (as opposed to 2 years for the milk jug).
I am going to try out the flower pot strategy.
About Me: Jeremy wears many hats, including substitute teacher, school garden educator, hike leader, youth group advisor, Gardener's Swap Meet coordinator, husband, and father. His lifelong quests include the search for the perfect burrito, and more recently, how to sprout an avocado tree from a pit.
Can you post/email a follow up? I'm considering this for my first ever garden but don't want to waste the resources if it didn't work out.