Ollas 101: Make Your Own Self Sufficient Water Systems

Looking for off grid gardening tips and simple watering tips that actually save time and water? 🌱 This ancient terracotta watering method — known as ollas (pronounced oya/oi-ya) — is a form of passive irrigation that works like a self watering system. It’s been around for over 4,000 years, and today it’s still one of the easiest ways to grow your own food and keep plants thriving without daily watering.

Here at Wayback Estate, our little Australian homestead, we’ve been building out our off grid water system, and in our last video we showed you how we haul and store creek water. In this video, we’re taking it one step further by showing you how we add ollas into the garden — a low-tech but incredibly effective tool for homesteading and sustainable living. We've been using them for a while and they're one of our favourite homesteading tools; we think it's an epic gardening tip!

What you’ll see in this video:

What you need → simple terracotta pots and supplies to make ollas at home.

How to make them → a quick, step-by-step DIY gardening build anyone can do.

How to install them → the best depth and spacing for raised garden beds, pots, veggie patches and allotment gardening. Our high-volume ollas are more productive than the terracotta spikes or terracotta watering spikes, but the principle is the same if you're working on a smaller scale and you need to know 'how to water my plants when I'm away'.

How they work → why ollas slowly release water to plant roots (true passive irrigation).

Using them day-to-day → how often to refill, what crops they suit best, and practical watering tips we’ve learned.

System integration → how we’re using this our broader off grid water system.

For us, this isn’t just about gardening — it’s about simple living, living differently, food resilience, and making the most of what we have. With ollas, we’re able to grow our own food while cutting down on water waste and daily chores. It’s the kind of old-fashioned wisdom that fits perfectly into a modern tiny house or homesteading journey.

If you’re curious about trying forgotten techniques, learning practical ways to save water, or just love finding gardening solutions that actually work, you’ll enjoy this video. Sometimes the old ways really are the best.

This video contains music from Shutterstock, licensed by Splice video editing app.