The garden after a warm Winter

This time last year I was desperate. Low on water resources. No mulch to be had. Pithy dry beds...

This year, despite a very warm, and a standardly dry, Winter, the garden is thriving.[Click on image for enlarged view]

Why is this?

• Terracotta pot management has been tweaked so that I know when to top up the clay pots buried in the ground.I've learnt to be ruled by what the plants tell me.
• Water for the pots comes from the above ground swimming pool, now on bathing hiatus. Its salt content has dissipated so the water can be used on the garden seemingly without consequence.I use a watering can and stagger the top ups.It just requires a bit of too-ing and fro-ing.
• As required I hand water. But I'm careful to hose the plants that need more attention than others.
• Urine. My garden is fueled by pee. It is customized fertilization dependent on messaging from the plants ... but the home made stuff works. I haven't killed anything. My routine is impeccable. I guess I've got the results to prove its utility. (See the urine DIY).
• The most verdant section of my garden are the mounds. Never photogenic but that's because they are a jungle. If the seeming fertility persists into Summer, I'll be converting my whole garden to mounds.
• Since I take climbers up and over the garden by stringing them to jute twine, the beds below are still open and sun drenched. I can plant climbers almost at any location and as they begin their ascension, I drop twine down to them and navigate them  on a upward route I determine. Best of all: no 'build' issues that can come down in a storm.

The other advantage I've had this time around, is that I've finally improved my seed raising habits.  After playing around with various protocols, I now raise seeds in 9 and 10 cm plastic pots -- the ones you buy seedlings in. I find the depth and width gives me more leeway if my mothering duties are lacking at any time.

I usually plant several seeds in the one pot ( by using tweezers) and separate  the seedlings when I plant out. Each pot becomes its own micro-garden and it is much easier to stagger your plantings to suit your immediate needs. 

The paper pot roller and the shallow seedling trays have been given the flick. ...and I have not lost a plant once it has sprouted. I grow everything in these pots first, then transplant. My handicap is impatience as I wait for the seedling to grow to a transplant stage.

For the moment, my primary gardening input is quality seed raising mixes.  I'm also experimenting with liquid pro-biotics. These are liquid mixes of beneficial microbes that break down organic matter and make nutrients available to the plants. I use this stuff sparingly.

I rely on the chook pen for manured 'soil' (it's really just sand with chook poo) but I have decided that  I should lay down  trenches of horse or cow manure -- a La culture maraîchère  --when I build new mounds.

And that's it. I bury bones and other edibles from the house that the chooks don't eat. Every scrap of paper or cardboard gets thrown on the 'paths' -- the spaces between the beds and mounds. While I'm growing more of my own mulch(cannas, Qld arrowroot, etc) I still rely on grass clippings that professional mower bods dump on my nature strip. However this year, many of my mulching needs have been served by 'green mulch' cover by the growing plants themselves.

A wave of soil with floating pots: mound gardening with knolls

Since I've seriously begun to zero in on what I want,  the sense of what I'm doing becomes clearer -- at least to me.

My template is mixed vegetable gardening -- cropping a large number of different vegetables  in the same space.

To do this in the sub tropics and be imbued with the design logic of cottage gardening isn't a straight forward exercise because I'm growing a lot of unknowns.  If I was simply planting standard kitchen garden  fare I'd have some idea of what any one plant will or should do, but when you chase an eclectic mix of exotics --with many of them being vines --  the medley is sure to be a surprise. 

In the traditional cottage garden, you layer and mix the plants by height. But in our warmer climate such certainties are undermined because of my preference for climbers, creepers, ramblers and tubers. I'm not into look -- despite the flowers -- so much as cohabitation. Planting and growing is about pushing and exploring the envelope.

En route you lose some of your soldiers...

But with each success -- and with each disaster -- the garden speaks to you.

Let us not presume that I am in control. Nor am I so smug to answer in the affirmative the question, "are we there yet?"  The truth is that I have no real idea where I'm going.

It's improvisation -- a layering of what seems to be a succession of good ideas at the time.

This means I don't so much have one garden but several. Last year's. Last season's. Last month's. This week's...

While I've pursued many projects in this kitchen garden in way of experimentation, the overriding handicap of  building it on sterile sand has forced me to be relentless in pursuit of moisture. If I had my time again, I'd start off differently by digging long trenches and filling them with manures before building the garden beds on top. Hindsight is useful like that, but once you are away you make the best out of what you've got....5 years later on. 

MULCH SPONGES

But I keep returning to past activities and tweaking and re-applying them. Of late I've seriously gone back to harnessing my garden paths as mulch sponges. I keep layering paper and cardboard on the paths and throwing cut stuff on top, so that they become squishy. I may walk along each path only occasionally so it's not as though they're thoroughfares for traffic.

The irony is that rather than build up the beds, I dug down the paths. In sand you can do that.

While there is no pressing drainage need warranting raised beds -- I'm thinking that I should revisit the option. I'm not planning to raise the beds so much as add mounds to them.This is a Melanesian gardening habit, and the logic is beginning to register with me.

KNOLLS

If I add mounds to the beds -- knolls -- I increase my ground surface area, and engineer an inclined plain down which plants can tumble or ramble without necessarily wallowing in damp. I'm finding that many of the plants I'm growing don't so so well on a flat surface. I've also worked out that if I locate a terracotta watering pot in  the core of the knoll (like a volcano's vent) I can more efficiently irrigate the knoll than I  would be able to do a flat garden bed.

According to the above graphic, this works. It works on paper....

So, in a sense, I'm thinking of raising up my terracotta pots as though they've been elevated by a wave of soil -- upon which they'll float.

I hate to say this as it seems bizarre, but my experience with  mound gardening, thus far,  suggests that plants have more choices. They can go up or down. Drink by going deeper or chasing the falling contour of the soil surface. Fruiting bodies resting on the sides of each knoll are less prone to fungal infection and rotting. Inside -- within the knoll/mound -- there is more room for tubers to grow and/or go deeper.And like a box of choclates, you can invest your knoll with different centres: rotting wood, manures, kitchen scraps, dead and buried cane toads.

While the mounds will work by dint of contour design alone, the embedded terracotta pots make for a stunning hardware addition. As a centerpiece, the pots' moisture offerings are more accessible to more plants  so that their irrigating area increases.

The troughs between the knolls also serve to collect water as they function as gulleys. And running the length of each bed are the moisture retaining mulch sponge paths.

Now all I have to do is find -- or make -- the 'soil' to make these knolls happen....in places they have not existed before.One garden bed at a time.

• More on mound gardening.

Sponge Hole Irrigation

I've been experimenting with the mulching technique I've previously called a Honey Hole or  Fertility Trench.

It is a very simple method that is a useful for  irrigating and introducing  fertility into the soil. I refer to these holes as 'worm takeaways' because they concentrate a lot of organic matter in the one spot, and once settled, garden worms will move in and feast up.

But these holes' primary function -- while their contents breaks down -- is as a water sponge.

So they serve two functions:

• a vertical fertility mulch
• a water reserve/irrigating sponge

The trick is in the mix that you fill the holes with.

The Sponge Mix

After some experimentation I'm currently working from this recipe:

1. Throw old newspapers, junk mail, old phone books, cardboard, etc into a large container -- I use a wheelbarrow -- and steep  them in water.
2. When thoroughly wet, shred the papers and cardboard by  tearing the pieces apart with your hands. You should end up with lots of shredded paper and cardboard strips, something like papier mache
3. Put on some rubber gloves and with a sieve or just your hands break up a quantity of manure and sprinkle it into the paper mix, tossing, stirring  and blending the manure in as if you were making a muffin mix. The paper strips should all be  well coated with the manure. Delicious-- but don't lick the spoon.
4. Depending on your soil, the nature of your manures and so forth a good rule of thumb is a mix of 30-40% manure to 60-70% wet paper.
5. If the mix is too dry -- add more water -- and let the manure/paper mix marinate for 5  to  7 days, stirring occasionally so that you brew a dense manure tea.

Once you have prepared your sponge mix, you can dig your holes.

The Hole

1. With a hand spade dig a hole roughly half the depth of your forearm. I dump the soil I dig up into a 3 litre plastic pot so that I can keep each hole I dig the same depth and volume. Using a pot also keeps the soil off the garden bed, and any plants,  nearby.
2. Fill the hole with a generous amount of sponge mix and ram the mix down into the hole with your (gloved) fist or/& a mallet. You want to really stuff the mix into the hole so that you end up with a convex depression on top with the mix rising up on the sides of the hole. That's your mini-billabong.
3. Now place a stick or rod in the centre of your hole  and tip your bucket of dug up soil on the top of the hole. Pat the soil down and wiggle the stick to create  a crater --something like a hole on a putting green.
4. Mark your crater with a stick or label rod so that its location is flagged in your garden bed.

When watering the garden, direct a spray at the flagged crater you have marked so that the the mix below engorges with water and pools on top, like a miniature pond. If you dug each hole approximately the same depth and diameter, you should be aware how large is your sponge bowl.

Location. Location.

I use these sponge holes as a supplement to my terracotta pot irrigation system.

I position them in sections of the garden bed where I think the water from the pots isn't reaching. Since water is its own conductor, these sponge holes can act as channeling stations for water across the distances between the pots.

The large paper content serves as a sponge that absorbs water when  wetted and, as the sponge mix breaks down, the elevated carbon in the soil increases its water holding capacity, protecting the soil from  future arid conditions.

Sponge holes are also very effective when dug next to newly planted trees and perennials. They are also much less disturbing to soil structure than the excavation required to  dig elongated mulch trenches. While the manured  'goodness' is concentrated in one spot, soil biota and worms will do all the work of distributing the sponge mix more widely in the bed neighbourhood.

As the sponge holes sweat moisture into the surrounding soil the water merges with the fluid content emanating from the terracotta pots, thus promoting greater holding capacity and broader spread per litre of irrigation. In my sandy soils both methods ensure I keep moisture in my top soil longer rather than have it quickly drain away.

You need to be aware that the hole's contents are initially manure 'hot' so you need to consider what you plant nearby. Heavy feeders should do alright.

I treat these holes as a shadow version of my terracotta pots. They are roughly the same volume and depth  while serving a similar function. So when I come to fill the pots every 3-4 days, all I need do is direct my hose spay at the marked sponge holes as well...at least for the following few months. Rather than hose the garden beds -- wasting water and encouraging weed growth -- I concentrate my water usage in spots that store it underground.

In my imagination I envisage these sponge holes as a key element in my worm neighbourhood. In hot weather I discovered that garden worms will gravitate around the terracotta pots because of the coolness and moisture in the soil. These properties are replicated by the sponge holes with the added feature that they are also serve as a restaurant and takeaway. 

Gardening with mounds

I was wondering about gardening with mounds. 

I have discussed this before relative to the growing of sweet potatoes on conical mounds as practice norm throughout Melanesia and Polynesia. (See picture at right: that's' a serious mound!)

Since then I built a series of mounds and planted them out with potatoes with the perspective that I had begun to solve my  potato conundrum. 

I fiddled with the setup  and embedded a terracotta irrigator pot in the middle of each mound -- such that the mounds look like volcanoes with craters.

If you are into terracotta pot watering as I am the pot in the middle of a built up conical earth mound is a wondering engineering solution for water spread.It's like a chicken and egg thing . Wonderfully syncronicity. The shape allows not only broader water seepage but enables  more plants to access the irrigating core.

So I not only planted potatoes in the mounds but have since added Zucchini and am considering other options. Between the mounds, in the gullies, I just planted Taro.

However, I am reminded of an earlier gardening inspiration developed by Tiny Eglington.

It blew me away.Check out another example of the design method here ( sample picture at left).

When I laid out my own garden I didn't do this because all I had was sand to work with and going up -- such as for drainage -- didn't seem to make sense.

But that's only part of the story. Much as I tried to make Edlington's watering system work --watering the gullies rather than the beds (deploying a sort of wiking logic) -- I couldn't facilitate it.Not on sand, despite laying plastic and paper and mulch underneath the gullies.

But now that I can water with my pots -- Voila! I have a solution.

Of course gardening in mounds or ridges isn't new. 

HugelKulture is a quintessential mound method (pictured right below). But I've not been able to make HugelKulture work given my conditions. I suspect that here our climate is too dry.

But looking at the 'mound' and reviewing the literature on HK there is a lot of advantages in mounding to that size.

I've thrown a lot of twigs and paper into my mounds --to give them texture and some structural core.I sifted in manures and coated the lot in a blanket of lawn clippings mulch.

Some are a bit like ridges, but double camel hump ridges. I call them '2 pot mounds' as distinct form the conically shaped  'one terracotta pot' mounds.

I'm not certain how far down I should take the gullies. Water pooling doesn't happen here so excavating the gullies is primarily about getting dirt.

Mine are higgledy piggledy things and when I built them it was clear that not only could I water with my fav method -- da pots --  but I could harness the gullies for different purposes such that I could use some, rather than for pathways, as dumps for mulch and cut scrub, newspaper and such like the banana circle option.Even if I walk over this 'rubbish' its' not a problem. As soon as it breaks down I can put it on a garden bed or use it to make another mound.

Indeed these  beds of mine have tended to look like the shape and size of large upturned bathtubs, mini volcanoes or an Alien egg nursery...

But the logic of mounds of this size -- and irrigated as I do -- impresses me.

• You extend the surface area of your 'bed' by using a curved surface. 
• Despite the increased size your access to all plants is enhanced because the required reach is less.
• You harness gravity to encourage plants -- esp ramblers like cucumber, tomatoes and such -- to fall away and down onto a surface that will tend t be drier than a flat bed.
• You get to also plant in the gullies, esp more water dependent plants. (Thats' the estimate, anyway).
• Because the mounds are elevated beds -- just like any contour you can plant according to sun requirements -- as you'll have some 'sides' more exposed to the sun than others. So you plant, say, lettuces on the south of the mound and capsicums on the north and west. If planting extensively in the gullies is an option you can use the mounds as shade and or weather protection.
• Like the Melanesian examples mounds are demountable. That may seem an anathema but it is easy to shift a pile of dirt than dig a hole -- or disassemble a mound and build a new one in its place. Indeed when I began this project I had in mind that the mounds would be my 'portable' garden

How big can these mounds be  given my watering methods? Does the design actually work -- at least on my sandy soils? I'm sure that mounds like this would not suit all soils, as you have to consider erosion issues. But then if you plant out you'd have a underground web on your side. So there's soil run off perhaps? All you do is spade it back up the hill.

Normally, mounding like this would require a lot of precipitation. Conical mounds normally aren't friendly to irrigation systems. But then there's the terracotta pots, you see...and that's a game changer.

Of use:

• FAO discussion on using ridges
• FAO discusion on farrows.
• Adventures in mound gardening

Still more on terracotta pot irrigation...

Having got into some online chats about clay pot irrigation I thought I'd import dome of my comments...

I just bought another 10 pots from Masters at $3 each and put them to irrigation use.I now garden with over  60 pots  in situ. Today I got another batch of stoneware dinner plate lids for 20 cents each.

In the DIY adaption build I recommend grout rather than glues as generally a quick coating of the base is foolproof with grout. Glueing can be fickle. Just tape over the pot's drainage hole on the outside with masking or some other tape.

After using various irrigation approaches, buried hose driven, I'm absolutely smitten with clay pot style. Cut my water use in more than half. Change the whole nature of my garden and bought in worm colonisers.

On the question of terracotta wine coolers as irrigators -- I have to say that while some work, others don't...sweat. So stay away from wine coolers if you can. They aren't reliable.  The Master's pots -- a 19 to 21 cm rim (holding approx 2-2.5 litres) -- will sweat to effect and I've only had two (out of all of mine) that don't.

Given that an Olla --sold here as Wetpots -- costs $189 for a 10 pot watering system...price difference  do kick in. But the system seems to me to be a variation of Leeaky hose style approaches. 

With the single pots I can move them around as required. The shape of my garden doesn't matter nor does the location of any plant.

Have pot/Will travel.

All I need is a gardening hose to follow them.

Terracotta pot irrigation needs time to settle in. The soil has to synchronise. My pots empty on a 3-4 day cycle on sandy loam. In clay soil I suspect it would be a slower rate of emptying.  If you wanted to use them inside other pots, they'd work but a wicking bed approach would be more efficient.

****

In Summer white plates -- or white saucers --are preferable as lids because the bases supplied with some coolers get very hot and increase evaporation. But even if the coolers don't sweat they will nonetheless condense coolness and some moisture along their sides.

The Wine Cooler bases as lids are also more easily  circumvented by Cane Toads and mosquitoes.

Presently I'm exploring what planting distance from each pot suits various seedling species. 

Perennials have plenty of growing time to creep some distance.In my soil I'm usually distancing each pot by 1.3-1.6 metres from each other when placed in standard beds.

Elsewhere I embed a pot often alongside  new tree plantings. The wine coolers are excellent for that option.

But the synchronicity thing is important. Once the soil and plants have confidence that the pot is there and can be relied on to do its irrigating the whole soil neighborhood settles into remake. Osmosis pathways change. Soil texture alters. The change over a 4 month period is remarkable.. in my garden it was miraculous. Worms move into the pots' surrounds to survive the Summer heat and any dry periods.Biota activity quickens.

I'm  now  experimenting with planting patterns and suspect normal rectangular beds may be  a complication. As an exercise, I've built up some large mounds for tuber planting  and inserted pots -- wine coolers actually -- in the middle of each mound, like a crater in a volcano..but with a lid. That way the whole mound is constantly irrigated.

But the logic makes  a grand hypothesis:large conical mounds with terracotta pot craters....

As for watering-- I readily know how much water it takes to irrigate the garden so I am so considerate of my water usage.Other systems are not as easily monitored.So if I have 50 pots and each holds approx 2.5 litres I know that my water usage will be around 125-150 litres if I fill all of them up. I realized today that if I go around first and remove the lids, then do my watering circuit, I use less water than if I uncovered, watered and re-covered each pot while at each station.

****

Reason:The time it takes to lift the top plate and replace it given that I don't use a nozzle.I do often hose the surrounding plants on a bed, but if I'm just moving from station to station without having to bend down and play with lids -- I'm gonna be more water efficient.

What these 'plate lids' need is a long handle enabling a no bend approach. Like: _I_

Also over time, you see, plants grow over and around the plate lids and it can take some foraging to locate and lift, then replace, a lid.  So think of the tasks the hands may need to perform given that one is carrying a running hose. 

You could engineer up and run irrigation tubing into each pot as per the Olla habits but when  I fill manually I'm savvy with the water levels, water requirements, local vegetative health & growth, soil conditions...etc.

I'm 'communing' with Nature...

In dry and hot weather I hose my garden daily as a supplement because its base is so sandy. But I check the beds and handle the soil for indications of moisture content before hosing.

The other advantage per the 'effort' quotient with terracotta pots, is that they target irrigation to what you want to grow rather than what you don't (like weeds) ...and less for the more self sufficient  such as perennials.

****

Aside from the top/plate lifting complication I'm delighted with the system.

I happen to have Leeaky Hose Irrigation installed in my beds. Leeaky --SubSurface drip irrigation -- is well respected as a water saving irrigation system.

Leeaky Hose takes advantage of the fact that water acts as its own conductor. It is designed so that water ‘sweats’ through its walls at a controlled rate over long distances at low water flow. At pressures of 4psi or below the hose will deliver moisture to the surrounding soil through capillary action. As a rough guide, Leeaky Hose releases water below ground at around 2 litres per metre per hour.

...and I don't use it.

I stopped using it because:

• I had sandy soil and any irrigation session -- even over a few hours -- meant that the water soon dissipated in my sandy soil.
• I was 'over' watering one day and drying out on others.
• I'd turn the tap on (even just a wee bit) to run the system (and employ gravity) then forget about turning it off so I wasted water.(My tank system did not suit timers).Even if I used barrels as gravity feeds--I still had to fill the barrels. 
• The pressure wasn't constant for the whole tubular network and I could never actually tell how much water entered the system and how much water got where as all the activity was underground. With pots all you need do is look at the water level..and maybe feel the soil near bye.
• Once installed and hooked up, the tubing is hard to move around to new places.You have joins and lengths to consider.

With the pots I'm in control and I'm watering for 3-4 days rather than for 3-4 or more hours.

The research figures suggest that pots are as efficient -- or almost as efficient -- as wiking beds.

I've got more  info here on my site about my experience with terracotta pot irrigation...

But it has meant a massive change to the garden. Massive. It's also changed my gardening habits -- my stewardship -- as these pots and a garden hose are my primary tools. They serve as a sort of fulcrum anchoring everything else--the life force.

The literature (primarily by Indian horticultural researchers) does review how far the water travels relative to pot volume and soil type. See example. 

However, while I've changed my soil  sand by adding a lot of organic matter --thus increasing its water holding capacity, I suspect that the pots and the surrounding soil (and its biota) have taken time to consolidate the marriage. Like the way bushland relates to a stream.

It's not like irrigation flooding but constancy.

This 'could' mean that I'm promoting more fungal problems -- or , at least , more fungal problems closer to the pots than further away. But, for now, I can't answer that question because I cannot see a clear pattern emerging. 

And the worms love em heaps...lift a pot, even on the hottest Summer day, and you'll get a wriggle carnival. Before I hardly got a worm anywhere -- despite inoculation. My beds are now worm farms. This means that they are doing a lot of my work for me,  ferrying nutrients about and spreading the good stuff from my Honey Holes.

Now if I was designing my garden afresh I'd start with pot placement and construct the garden around them. There's something to be said for circular beds, or at least beds like this

O=O=O=O=O

=O=O=O=O=

O=O=O=O=O

-- indeed I am experimenting with growing tubers that way. Since I used to garden inside car tires the circle utility makes sense to me. You'd grow the annuals in the circle , close to the clay pot, and perennials (or slow growing annuals)  in the 'isthmus' between circles. The perennials' roots would have plenty of time to travel the distance to a wetter area.

If you can garden in beach sand you can garden anywhere.

After three and a half years of seriously collecting mulch materials I suspect that I now have the beginnings of a garden.

This change has kicked in because I now have dirt where once sand ruled. 

At some time over the past 6-8 months this qualitative  metamorphosis kicked in. Now, at the end of a very dry Summer -- when we are still officially in  drought -- I can dig  my fingers into the dirt and grasp a rich loam.

And I got critters ++++ in my dirt. Worms especially -- when once upon a time there were none known to roam. 

I think  worm activity rules the quality of the underfoot establishment and I guess I can now call myself a vermiculturist.

Feeding my soil takes a lot of effort. How many times have I carted lawn clippings from my front nature strip to the outback patches? Layer upon layer -- a recipe  enriched by collected newspapers and manures, a bit of blood and bone, twigs and sweat. 

Constantly spreading the green stuff, hunting down any more carbon materials I could get my hands on, fretting over soil quality and irrigation options.

So I guess it took me 3 years to graduate.  

The disconcerting thing is that having spent so much of my energy focusing on creating soil from sand I only now begin to address the question of growing plants better in it.  Maybe now I can begin to look at pH  issues and some of the other horticultural parameters that make for  good cropping. 

But what a great adventure it has been.  (Read about it here.)  If you can garden in beach sand you can garden anywhere.

En route I have to say that the gardening literature was not all that helpful. So much of what I've done has been trial and error. Most of it presumes that you start with dirt and not sterile granules devoid of an active biology. And the irrigation handbooks simply have no concept of how porous my untreated sand is...still is. 

Now my garden is 'perched' atop of sand like a Fraser Island lake. The difference is that my 'garden' isn't impermeable. It just slows down the water as it diffuses through the soil long enough to foster the makings of a garden. I suspect that without the addition of clay  it will remain very permeable. So my interest is in seeing how much I can do in way of soil improvement with organic matter alone. My working hypothesis is that big bits of organic matter -- my favorite being rolled up newspapers -- act like sponges, holding onto more moisture than the surrounding soil. 

This is my number one principle -- a principle that underlies my use of clay pot irrigation. Indeed, I guess I  have added clay to my soil -- but in the form of  buried flower pots.

Sometime this year I'll write up my experience in as a sort of DIY manual for those who may be interested in  a few hints for gardening on sand.

But outside of all that I gotta say that my main inspiration--aside from local Wallum ecology --  has been the rain harvesting work of Brad Lancaster and the literature on vermiculture, especially David Murphy's wonderful book , Organic Growing With Worms.  As the irrepressible Peter Cundall writes in regard to it:

"This is an amazing, inspiring book..it should be on the bookshelf of every farmer, gardener, conservationist, scientist or anyone who comprehends the environmental dangers now threatening all life forms on earth."

How to honeyhole.

After exploring trench mulching a lot in  my garden I decided to adopt some of the principles that govern honeyholes and fertility trenches.

The main variation from my past practices are:

• tear up the newspaper and cardboard
• mix it with green mulch and manure 
• add water (even urine!) to the mix
• let it marinate
• ram the mix into the honeyhole

This is still an experiment.

1. Honeyholes should be standard depth and diameter. In my established garden I keep them to a forearm's depth. 
2. Honeyholes' location should always be marked.

When positioning your honeyhole remember that its contents may be a tad strong for some nearby plants. So remember: Location. Location. Location.

If creating new beds, long trenches would be more apt.

When watering the garden, be sure to always hose your honeyholes so that they absorb more water for slower local distribution. 

A honeyhole  is a pulpy version of a slow watering terracotta pot irrigator...and my presumption is that any fertilising is spread by the creatures of the soil especially worms. I'm thinking that juxtaposing terracotta pot irrigation with honeyholes makes a lot of gardening sense --esp on my sandy soils

Afterthoughts

I've found that my garden takes in moisture unevenly. This is a product of how much carbon matter is in my sandy soils...but other factors come into play.

Mulch can shield the underlying soil from getting wet...especially if precipitation is often light. While using terracotta pots for irrigation will get regular  moisture below that layer , the pots'  seepage envelope  can only reach so far.

The honeyholes serve as supplementary irrigators as their carbon/cellulose content hold moisture and their vertical alignment ferry moisture below the mulch layer. They are like so many wells. 

If I had planning options I'd alternate terracotta pots with honeyholes and let the worms work out their daily lifestyle. But as much vermiculture proves, a good worm colony will spread the fertility everywhere they go -- moving carbon about like dodgen cars. 

My other experiments with additions -- such as laying down rolled up newspaper and logs on top of my soil, in hugelkultur fashion -- have not been very successful. The cellulose needs to be buried, encased in soils and its biota. 

So these little mine shafts --adapted from my trench mulching experiments -- may suit my conditions. Filling them is like stuffing cannoli. 

 But a few question remain:

1. How many freshly made honeyholes/how far apart can I insert in the one garden bed?
2. How close can I locate a honeyhole to a growing plan or a freshly planted seedling?
3. What happens to the hole once its contents has rotted down? Do I refill the space with more 'honey' or with the soils I initially  set aside -- and dig a fresh hole elsewhere? 

•  Read more about terracotta pots for irrigation

Terracotta Pot Irrigation

I occasionally post comments on  Terracotta Pot Irrigation as I've been exploring and experimenting with the method for some time.

It's a bit of a passion.

On my very sandy soil they've proven the only approach that works while saving water such that I'm more or less irrigating from my one 3,000 litre tank and only supplementing occasionally.

 My key lessons are:

1. Pot size: at least 20 cm in diameter
2. Routine top up: every 3-4 days usually despite the weather conditions.My pots will take 4 days to empty whether it rains or not.Nor does evaporation seem to impact much on this rate.
3. White, heavy white coloured stoneware plates for lids. Lighter or smaller plates will only be upended by crows. 
4. Rather than cover the drainage holes with a wee tile and  sealant, I find it preferable to lay down a layer of grout across the bottom of each pot because by sealing the whole bottom,   the rate of irrigation is slowed even further by up to 25%. Water is  forced by gravity  to disperse through the sides alone. 
5. Also test your 'sealed' pot to see if it does hold water without leaking and, conversely, that  the terracotta is permeable.  Even raw terracotta pots, seemingly from the same batch/same pottery may often not leach water -- I guess because of differences in clay structure and grog.To bury these is a waste of time and space. Grow plants in 'em instead.

My current focus is exploring the most effective and water efficient distance between pots given my soil type...while experimenting with planting patterns and sowing distances around each pot's perimeter.

I'm thinking that a Terracotta Pot Irrigated Garden requires a different template than the standard rectangular bed pattern. A wave pattern...

 While this research  argues that even small pots can maintain a wet front 60 cms from the pot for a period of 10 days, the factors impacting on distance  are variables such as soil type and clay mix.Since I need to refill mine at shorter intervals, 10 days of constant irrigation from one pot full of water aint an option. 

Of related interest are elements such as the diameter of the pot vs its depth...but my feeling is that a key factor is the surface areas on the sides of the pot that are responsive to the pressure of gravity. That means that only part of the 'walls' will be wet enough to irrigate.

Consider a wet sponge and how water will always settle at the bottom of the sponge with varying degrees of wetness the deeper you go....while the driest area will be at the top.

These pots follow the same rules of Physics. 

Clay pot worm farming

Sort of.

My garden has suffered long time from a shallow habitation of  earth worms. Sandy soil. Absence of biomass. Limited irrigation...

It wasn't very worm friendly.

 No matter how much compostable material I'd thrown at the garden beds every time I went on a worm hunt the critters were hard to come by. 

Since I am of the school that celebrates busy worms as the epitome of good gardening DIY you can imagine my frustration. Here I was preparing the beds for sleepovers and I wasn't attracting  guests.

But hey! today I was in for a surprise. 

I was replacing my wine cooler clay pots that I use for irrigation with my preferred 22 cm terracotta pots and every time I pulled up an embedded pot, the hole was alive with earth worms. 

I had guests. Finally. Despite the conditions

This is a major milestone both for my garden and terracotta pot irrigation. The worms appreciate the moisture in the neighborhood of each buried pot. Given that we have had hardly any rain, face  drought conditions with the persistent strong dry winds and despite my water usage being halved -- you can imagine how keen I am about this result. 

Worms. Happy worms. Big fat active wriggling worms. Despite the dry conditions.

These pots -- the 'wine cooler' ones -- have been embedded for some time and this fact suggests that terracotta pot irrigation takes a while to consolidate.What works may need time to kick in.

I suspect this isn't simply about waiting for the worms to move in. Soil gotta change. Plants gotta decide where to send their roots. Osmotic pathways adapt. Soil chemistry alters.

We're talking a few gardening months....

I suspect that the ecology 'of the terracotta pot' must also prove itself by being reliable -- ergo that god (ie: I) keeps topping up the water level. Plants (and worms) want to be confident that there's always a good chance that a refreshing drink can be  had at the neighborhood terracotta bar.

My view is that without the pots doing their magical best I would not be harvesting as I am now doing as the conditions have been so brutal these last 6 months. 

To have worms! Well that's  icing on the mud cake.

Of related interest:

"For irrigation purposes, it is important to remember water is absorbed and moves slowly through clay soils, but once wet, they retain significant amounts of moisture. Water is absorbed and moves quickly through sandy soils, but they retain very little. This means water applied quickly to clay soil has a tendency to run off rather than move into the soil. Therefore, when irrigating clay soils, water should be applied slowly over a long period but then the site may not need irrigation for several days. Irrigation on sandy soils should be applied quickly but for short periods. Irrigation times on sandy sites should be shorter, otherwise water moves beyond the root zone, becoming unavailable to the plant and contributing to soil leaching. For efficient water use under certain weather conditions, sandy sites may need daily irrigation for short periods. Clay soils have greater capillary (sideways and upward) movement than do sandy soils  Quick water application on sandy soils will contribute to a broader wetting area, providing more soil volume for roots to exploit."  -- Source:Soil type influences irrigation strategy

Managing Clay Pot Irrigation

For more reports about my clay pot experiences and experiments, go HERE.

Points of interest:

• My water usage has fallen over 50% with these greater focused and considered efficiencies. Whether the plants are getting enough water remains to be seen.They are alive (we are experiencing very dry conditions) and the soil around the pots is moister than soil away from the pots...despite its sandiness.

• Some pots -- not many -- can be fickle and will perform differently -- drain too quickly or hardly at all. I've found that it is preferable to seal the whole bottom of the pot with grout rather than to try and rely on glues and such to plug the pot drainage holes.Grout is also more reliable as a sealant. Covering the bottom completely will also reduce seepage rates by up to 25%.

• Filling the pots is quicker than hand watering the garden. Twenty to twenty five seconds at each pot station.move on: next pot.

• Don't put fertilizer in the pots despite what others say. Fertilizers merely coat  the pots' insides with scum and will inhibit sweating .

• A snug lid fit  is important as it is remarkable how many critters will dive in. Cane toads especially. But the > 20 cm wide brim topped with a stoneware dinner plate (50 cents at Op shops) is a snug fit. Don't use terracotta garden pot saucers as they get too hot and are more expensive -- besides they are not  white unless you paint them.

• If mosquito larvae occupies the pot waters, let the water dry up and then refill the pot.

More about Terracotta Pot Irrigation...>

Terracotta Garden Pots are go!

After  plugging the drainage holes in another batch of  terracotta pots I have embedded  them in my garden beds. Sealing holes in terracotta is not as easy as it may seem. You need to check to see if they sweat rather than leak. Watching beads of moisture form on the outside of  the terracotta  for the first time is  a thrill. 

To then entomb them in situ is like making an offering to the soil.

With over 50 pots in place in my garden -- standard plant pots and terracotta wine coolers -- filling them is now a routine chore.  I suspect that if I stiffen the end of the hose by wrapping a rod to it topping up each pot will be easier and I won't have to crouch down so much. 

But each time you visit a pot station I get to inspect local ecology.

Instead of using tiles I'm now preferencing heavy white dinner plates I get cheap at Op shops as lids atop the pots. Facing up they sit snuggly on the pot lips and the white stands out in the garden beds. As the plants grow and more mulch is scattered on the beds you need a marker to find the pots when refuelling otherwise they get hidden.The snugger fit offered by the plates  makes it harder for crows, passing canines or escaped chooks to displace the lids. If a lid is ajar there is more evaporation, and mosquitoes or cane toads will move in. The white plates also reflect heat and reduce evaporation.

Even though my newer  pots are mass produced Italian imports not all pots are equal and the sweat rate varies probably because of the clay mix and idiosyncratic  effects of firing times. The rate at which these pots drain  is dependent on variables I don't, as yet, understand.

If the soil is already wet they'll drain faster than if it is dry. Where pots have ' settled in' and the local soil and flora have adapted to their presence there is remarkable plant growth compared to non-pot places which are water neglected. But the interaction takes time -- maybe weeks-- to consolidate so it is not like hosing a garden bed. This is a subtle almost passive irrigation process driven by  gravity but facilitated by the plants themselves, the amount of soil carbon and biota .

The slow release is ideal for my sandy soils as all other approaches I've used ended soon after I stopped watering as the water would drain away into the aggregate below each bed.

Research done by the University of Pretoria in South Africa confirms how effective these pots are in reducing water usage.

The clay pot used for irrigation is an unglazed indigenous earthen pot which has many micropores in its wall. The microporous wall does not allow water to flow freely from the  pot, but guides water seepage from it in the direction where suction develops. When buried neck deep into the ground, filled with water and crops planted adjacent to it, the clay pot effects sub-surface irrigation as water oozes out of it due to the suction force which attracts water molecules to the plant roots. The suction force is created by soil moisture tension and/or plant roots themselves

CLAY POT SUB-SURFACE IRRIGATION AS WATER-SAVING TECHNOLOGY

So with that in mind, watching the beds adapt to  my sub surface rig is going to be interesting.  The South African research recommends that the pots should always be kept wet "by not allowing water to deplete beyond 50% capacity. This will counteract possible clogging and enhance water flow out of the clay pot".

This means I need to keep checking my water levels. It is still too early to establish a strict routine but I suspect I may need to top up the pots every 3-4 days in order to run the system at primary efficiencies.

Compared to my current watering schedule this  is less labour intensive. It also offers a ready feedback on what's happening in the soil. That's something I appreciate as it will focuse my attention more.