Gardener Shares an ‘Ancient Watering Technique’ To Help Your Plants Stay Hydrated for Long

Plants don’t have limbs to walk, jump, play guitar, or give a ballerina performance. But they have thousands of mouths. Scattered across their green-tinted flesh, these creepy little alien mouths, called stomata, not only help the plants breathe in carbon dioxide but also evaporate water and spew oxygen as they breathe. Depending on the environmental conditions, the tiny pairs of guard cells studded within manage the opening and closing of these stomata mouths. When a plant is thirsty, its body releases a hormone that signals the guard cells to shut themselves so that they can retain the water, per The Guardian.

Sometimes, a thirsty plant emits staccato popping sounds, per Science Friday, to signal to the gardener that it’s thirsty. In response to this signal, gardeners usually feed the plants with water or other hydrating liquids. When urban gardener, Kia Jade (@kia_urbangardener) noticed that her plants were thirsty, she decided to use an ancient watering method to see how it affected the plants: an olla, pronounced “oh ya.”

“I decided to test this ancient gardening method based on suggestions from a lot of amazing gardening folks over here on TikTok. Have you used an Olla pot before?” Jade asked the viewers in the caption. She shared that she almost “killed her garden” as she “went away on holidays” and she had “no way of watering it.” At this point, she came across a series of TikTok videos where creators advised her to use an "olla pot" to water the plants.

Explaining the “ancient gardening technique” in the video, Jade said, “It’s a clay pot. They can come in many different sizes. You bury them deep within the soil around the base of your plants with the whole goal that it slowly releases the water through the clay.” In the background of the overlay captions, she showed herself digging the soil in a plant pot with a shovel, inserting a tapered-neck olla pot inside the soil, pouring water into its narrow lip, and popping the lid back into it. “It provides consistent moisture to the plants,” Jade said. According to GrowVeg, ollas can end up saving about 70% of water. Additionally, ollas, she explained, “allow [plants] to grow healthier by promoting stronger root growth.”

“It’s really something that I’m excited to be trying,” Jade confessed. In the comments section, curious people expressed interest in her idea. Others shared similar alternative methods for watering the plants. “I found a terracotta wine bottle cooler at a second-hand shop, they were popular in the 70s and you can put a saucer as a lid,” commented @doyouseeeeeee. @kaatje.eri, and several others, endorsed the idea of using “spike ollas.” Describing them, they said, “They are smaller and you put a water-filled bottle upside down in it. Works great too.”

According to Epic Gardening, ollas are an ancient method of watering the garden from the underground, with origins dating back 4000 years. Typically, an olla is an unglazed clay or terracotta pot designed to leach the water outwards so it can reach the plant’s roots. An olla is buried in a garden or a container with its mouth towering above the topsoil. The pores in the walls of the clay pot allow the water to move into the soil in a slow seepage.

This seepage is triggered by suction wherein the soil enshrouding the olla exerts tension on the pot and pulls its water. In case the soil is wet or sopped in rainwater, the water tends to remain inside the olla until the soil is dry and thirsty once again. This science behind the olla protects the plants from waterlogging and helps them stay hydrated in times of drought.

You can follow Kia Jade (@kia_urbangardener) on TikTok for urban gardening tips.