Comments on: Clay Pot Irrigation

By: Tibebu

Tibebu — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:40:19 +0000

I am very much interested in pitcher irrigation,it is a wonderfull method,i want to know the ratio of sand and clay for an excellent porousity of clay pots.

By: Jaime Olguin

Jaime Olguin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:45:54 +0000

I started a raised bed garden using pots for irrigation.
I am not using any but natural organic matter (no comercial food for plants) my plants are growing aparently healty, but to slow compare to a drip irrigation and comercial food for plants (my neighbor’s garden)
I have never use this sistem before, I asume I am doing well, but I have questions on the water: my wife claims the garden nees more water, but when I planted, I placed the new plants roots, aside to the clay, so my idea is that I probably place the plant to close to the pots and I am geting to much water in the root system.
Can you bring more light about this? please. We are wrowing tomatos, eggplant, corn, green beans, squash, and a few erbs (taht are doing fantastic)
We will apresiate your replay.

By: Veil Thom Summary at Continental Drift

Veil Thom Summary at Continental Drift — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 18:28:10 +0000

[...] also incorporated health and nutrition training. Workshops were also taught on well digging, dryland irrigation, cooking fuel alternatives, and basic concepts in environmental [...]

By: Barak

Barak — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 11:38:49 +0000

No problem – The pots pictured are locally made clay pots. The are close to idea actually, and if you are in a situation where you are implementing this as a rural technology, making use of an existing local industry is always best. Key characteristics of the pot are:

Size: between 7 and 15 liters (too small and you water too often, too big and your labor goes way up with digging large holes
Shape: round or squat is ideal
Opening: narrow neck (reduce opening size to reduce evaporation and contamination)
Composition: unglazed porous clay – you can either use a crude clay which has larger/mixed particulate sizes a is not quite pure which will result in larger pores during the firing process. Or you can mix 20% sand with 20% quality clays (the best option) or the same % of sifted rice hulls or or sawdust. The firing process will of course burn out the filler leaving uniform pores and a high-quality pot.

The pots I use are low-quality clay w/ a low firing temperature so they are prone to breakage and/or having pores that transmit water very rapidly. However, in my case it is still judicious to use the local pots rather than trying to create a local industry for manufacturing higher quality pots which would be too expensive for rural farmers to purchase.

As best as I can tell they use course red clay with sand impurities and some straw mixed in (probably less than 20%) and are fired are probably 800 F which is what you normally achieve in open firing pits.

By: Bridgit

Bridgit — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 15:32:15 +0000

I am interested in learning how the pots were made, their size, and composition. I am researching this method to use in the southwest US. I’m located in Albuquerque, NM and have been researching this for over a year now. Could you share any findings of the use of the pots?

thanks for any feedback

By: Barak

Barak — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:00:45 +0000

We have only just started to teach the briquette press in Veil Thom, Cambodia. The community seems interested in the technology, though generally, they seem quite happy with deforesting their land to produce charcoal. It’s my hope that they will find the briquette press a better alternative (cheaper, less labor, higher profit margin etc) and that it will be used widely in the community. Another impetus for it’s success is that I can then us Veil Thom as a model community for introducing the technology to other communities as well as NGO’s.