You may want to consider another project in conjunction with your terra preta garden. It is possible to use flushed-out fish pond water to irrigate and fertilize a garden, or to cycle that pond water through hydroponics vegetable trays. If it is used with hydroponics, the water can be returned to the fish pond because the plant roots will have cleaned it, and there is no need for an additional filter. However, I think that it is better to use the water for ground irrigation instead of hydroponics, because I believe that the trace minerals in the terra preta soil make the food more nutritious than what you can get from even the best hydroponics arrangements.
And of course, the fish should be the kind that you can eat rather than the decorative, expensive and utterly useless koi. If your land is subject to a lot of flooding, then you should only raise native fish so that non-native fish do not inadvertently get released into the wild.
I have learned that tilapia are easy to raise and they are native to just about everywhere in the world and so they may be a good choice for you; however, they are difficult to breed because they require a huge amount of space for breeding.
We are limited in space for a pond, but we may someday have a small catfish pond near the patio in the grassy people part of the yard. That is, if they turn out to be easy to breed; I haven't started the research on that as yet since we have many other projects to complete before putting in a fish pond. If any of you have advice about this, I would be very happy for you to write to me.
And of course, some of the garden vegetables and leaves can be used to feed the fish, and any parts of the fish that are not eaten can be buried in the garden for fertilizer. This results in a nice closed system where each part supports another and you get double and triple use out of each part.
You could also consider keeping chickens to roam through your garden to eat the insects and also to provide eggs, as well as being mobile sources of fertilizer for the garden. Also, the eggshells are high in calcium and can be recycled into the soil. And here's a weird but effective-sounding strategy that someone once told me: hang a chicken feeding cage over the fish pond; and as the chickens eat the grain, their fecal matter drops into the pond and is eaten by the fish, so that you actually get **two** feedings out of the same amount of grain!
YES, WE CANNED
If your terra preta is as productive as ours has been, you will be overwhelmed with delicious produce and the pleasant dilemma of what to do with it all.
You could give it away to those patient neighbors of yours that did not call the noise police when you were loudly drumming outside while breaking up the charcoal, and who did not complain when you buried the smelly dead fish upwind of them. That would be a nice thing to do, and it may gain you some neighborly good-will that you will need for your future terra preta garden capers (the possibilities are endless).
Or, you can preserve your harvest and be able to keep most of it for yourself. Mike and I opted mostly for the latter, although we have shared some with the neighbors.
We are canning tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and herb mixes for spaghetti sauce almost every weekend. We are aiming for 100 quart jars, because we figure that is about how much spaghetti sauce that Mike makes in a year.
Our vegetables are far better than anything that can be bought in the stores -- even the organic places -- because our vegetables have the benefit of the mineral boost from rock powder. And so it feels like a significant accomplishment when we preserve that incredibly tasty and nutritious produce for our later use.
And there's nothing quite like that cold beer after a hot day in the kitchen, canning vegetables. You'll see.
FINAL ADVICE, UNTIL THE NEXT SEQUEL
DO research traditional ways of agriculture for your area and use those plants and strategies, as they will likely be the best and most productive, hardiest in your climate, and also require the least amount of work for maintenance.
DO record where the plants were grown in each year so that you don't put the same ones in the same places in successive growing seasons; this rotation is done to prevent diseases and pests from taking hold.
