DIY Self-Watering Pot for the Garden (Olla Update)

with warm summer weather our plants are growing by leaps and bounds and we're also spending a lot of time watering them and here in the home garden i'm watering my containers every single day and everything in the greenhouse as well because the water evaporates pretty quickly and if i don't keep on top of things plants can dehydrate the compost can go dry and plants can suffer so that brings into question what do we do when we're not able to water as regularly we're going to go away for the weekend that's why about six years ago i created a video showing how i made these diy oyas and this looks just like an ordinary terra cotta pot unglazed brand new and that's exactly what it is and this is all you need to create a self-watering system directly in the ground i'm going to go through exactly how it works again because that video although i did share how it does work there there's lots of questions still and as i'm going to be planting up my tomatoes in the greenhouse and much larger containers i'm going to be installing the oyas and i also found a new way to plug up the hole in the bottom a non-toxic way so i want to share with you sugru and talk about how you can use that for plugging up this hole but also it has lots of other uses as well [Music] i'm really pleased with this i've not yet used these palette planters to grow tomatoes in but as you might be aware timber prices are astronomical at the moment so i thought why not use these planters that were empty from our move and i think they might just do the trick i'm going to go through how i planted them up in just a couple minutes just want to talk to you about how oils work because i think from the first video and the comments that were left it wasn't quite clear first of all oyas are made out of unglazed terracotta so like terra cotta pots you can buy them purpose-made and they are also astronomical in prices which is why it makes sense to just make your own it's dead easy terra cotta that's unglazed will allow air and moisture to pass through that surface through this material which is why when you fill up a terracotta pot over just a few minutes you can start to see that water starting to seep through from the other side if your pot is painted this won't work because the paint and the glaze on the outside will keep the moisture inside the pot so you need the cheap terracotta pots to make your diy oils once you have them made and filled with your choice of filler for the hole at the bottom and that's to keep the water inside you need to bury them in the ground near your plants and water will seep through the terracotta but it will only make the soil or the potting mix directly around the pot a bit moist the way they work is that plants can sense that moisture and they grow right up to the pots and the roots latch onto the side of the pot and draw moisture directly from it so if you have a tomato plant over there it's probably not going to be able to benefit from an oya you need to have it really close so in the case of a tomato they tend to grow one to two feet in all directions and so i have them right up against this oya so they can easily grow up to it other plants are different so you need to research how big the root system is of your plant and make sure that you put your oil within that distance now as far as how many oils you need for a garden i would say for a tomato plant like this i would have one oya for that one and then another oya in this container these two will work and it will be perfect for these three plants i'm growing tomatoes in a couple of different types of container this year and these three in the back are in 18 inch pots and they are in just bog standard multi-purpose peat-free compost i've not added anything to it and although tomatoes can grow quite deep so up to five feet they can grow just as happily in smaller containers as well and in fact some even say that growing in smaller containers increases the amount of fruit that you get over here i have three more plants and they are sandwiched in between oils so there's one here with a cork at the bottom this one is one of the original oils and it has cement at the bottom and again this is peat free multi-purpose compost in the palette planter but i mixed it with vermiculites and that's because this container will let out a lot more moisture than the plastic pots and vermiculite not only adds to the structure of the compost or potting mix but it helps to retain water as well and slow releases that and i've also opted to put a liner in the planter as well and this i hope will help to keep the potting mix from eroding out and also to help with water retention now i have a really short video showing how to make oils it's some years old it has some dodgy music but it shows a basic premise but i'll show you as well today you need a terracotta pot obviously when you buy these as plant pots they're going to have a drainage hole at the bottom that will release water if you have it buried in a container like this or out in the garden so you do need to plug it up in that original video i showed how to plug it up using a kind of a putty a mounting putty and also cement both of them work there were some people who were asking about whether or not the cement would affect the ph of the soil around it's such a small amount i don't think that it has had any difference to my containers and my tomatoes so i wouldn't worry about that at all there were some questions about whether or not the putty that i used was non-toxic as well it is but i found also that a cork works really well although you need to get the larger ones for the larger pot so have a bottle of champagne or prosecco and use that as an excuse to fill your oil at the beginning of the video i mentioned a product that's relatively new to me it's called sugru and it's actually amazing for the diyer or if you want to fix anything and it's great in the house so you can fix everything from broken plat pots to electrical wires to broken bits in the dishwasher because it's completely waterproof and it's silicone based and it's what i use to create this seal at the bottom of this oya so it's essentially a non-toxic putty you've got 30 minutes to work with it mold it into whatever shape you want and then it sets and you can easily get this out if you push on it but this will be waterproof it has a nice slick surface and it's a it's a good solution for if you want to maybe use this pot as a plant pot again in the future and as far as the sugru is concerned there are just so many other uses for it and i've seen loads of people experimenting with it online but also you can use it to make things like plant pot feet which are really important if you're going to have your plant pots sitting out on the patio in the winter if you've got freezing temperatures you can use it to mend broken tools so you can use it to mold a new handle for example so it's actually a really cool product and again it's non-toxic so this is your essential oil the only other thing that you need is a lid and i'm using plastic pot saucers now i started off using just ordinary terra cotta but yes a little bit of water does evaporate from those so plastic is better you can also get glazed terracotta as well there were some comments in the video the original video that you can maybe turn this upside down and create a bee waterer which is a great idea just make sure that you put some pebbles or something inside so that any bees that fall in can get back out and that they have a place to land and some people actually said you can maybe even grow moss or a tiny fairy garden in there you can be so creative with what you want to do it's your garden it's your oil feel free to personalize it however you want the important thing is is that they provide a really inexpensive way for you to keep your plants hydrated and here in the greenhouse i will be watering the tomato plants it's not just the oils and this was another question is that can you just forego watering until those plants get established and until their roots are latched firmly on the side of the pot they're going to need moisture and even when they are latched on it's still going to help them if you continue to water manually and i tend to water directly at the base right where the roots are and only enough another question that i get asked a lot is can i put liquid fertilizer in the water in the oil technically yeah you could it would actually make its way to the plants however any kind of fertilizer in here is only going to create a big mess of algae and bacteria and all kinds of gunk in there so i would say hold off on the liquid fertilizer if you want to to fertilize your plants do it at the base of the plants just fill these guys with pure water i often get asked how often do you need to refill your oils it depends on the size of the plant the time of the year lots of different factors but i pretty much use the oils for my tomato plants and i tend to fill them up every couple of days once the plants get really big and tall nowadays i mean every four days five days even but it's just so easy to walk in here lift up the lid and have a look and then you can gauge how quickly your plants are draining it so if you're going to be going away on a trip or you need to leave your plants for a little bit you'll better know the time needed to refill and it's also going to be a factor of how many plants are attached to that pot you might have a couple of plants like here you might just have one i hope that this video has answered some of your questions about oyas if you watched that original video and if it's completely new to you i can only recommend using the system and it has been used for thousands of years in various forms especially in central america and it saves on time in watering it also saves on water because it's a slow release system and you don't have to buy anything expensive and you don't have to mess with anything that's electronic thanks so much for watching check out that original video and i also have a playlist with loads of other diy projects for the garden including these pallet planters and lastly if you're interested in sugru do check out their website and i'm going to leave a link below in the video description see you next week [Music] you

Channel: Lovely Greens

Views: 94,664

Keywords: allotment, grow your own, vegetable gardening, allotment gardening, gardening tips, gardening, edible garden

Id: BO0QeK260EM

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021