The garden plant I am trying to help with an Olla pot, or two, is Acer shirasawanum 'Jordan'. Every year it is stunningly beautiful in spring and then the sun and wind comes along and gives it a passionate kiss and its top canopy of leaves curl up.
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| 1.9L Olla pot |
I planted Jordan not far from the top of my somewhat sloping garden and didn't realise the problem until it was too late. Obviously, water is going to drain downhill away from its roots. Now its roots have buried under sandstone rocks (my garden is 850ft above sea level on the Pennine Mountains of Yorkshire) and I cannot dig it up without the fear of killing it. So remedial action was vital. An Olla pot is now buried with its top jutting above ground, about twelve inches up-slope from Jordan so that the water from the Olla will trickled down towards Jordan.
First, I watered Jordan (it is hot and sunny today, and I sank the thirsty terracotta without soaking (you can soak it first if you please) and kept pouring water into the Olla until the water level stopped dropping. The way Olla pots work is very clever. The terracotta absorbs water but when the soil around it starts to become dryer, water seeps out of the Olla and enters surrounding soil where roots await. Clever, huh? This is the first year in all my years of gardening that I had heard about Olla pots.
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| Olla pot sunk into soil |
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| Olla pot buried with its corked neck above ground |
I realised that sooner or later I would end up accidentally doing something and breaking the Olla pot so I have inverted a light coloured plastic pot over it as a strong reminder that it is there! A dark pot would attract heat which is not what I want.  |
| Plastic pot inverted over a terracotta olla pot |
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| Acer shirasawanum 'Jordan' |