DO leave a few weeds or native plants here and there. They are beneficial to the soil, especially if they are deep-rooted. When the leaves drop off of the plant, they will return minerals to the surface that might otherwise have been lost. Also, the native plants support the native pollinators, and that is always important.
DO put in drip irrigation as soon as you can.
DON'T buy flimsy tomato cages. They are a waste of money. Believe me, you are going to grow some monster tomato plants in your terra preta garden, and they will bend and break the flimsy kind of tomato cages or just pull them right out of the ground. Get the strong ones that you can use again next year -- it's worth the extra initial investment.
DON'T use municipal mulch. It's free or cheap, but you have no idea what is in it. There is probably no end of herbicides and pesticides from people's yards in that mulch; after all, very few people are as enlightened as you are about the dangers of the many chemicals that are commonly slathered onto lawns and flower beds. If you absolutely must use municipal mulch, then pile it up in a corner and leave it to leach out its poisons for at least a year before adding it to your terra preta. Two years would be better.
DON'T plant your vegetables right next to a treated-wood fence. Those pesticides in the treated wood leach out and get into your vegetables. Keep at least two feet of distance between treated wood and your vegetables. Also, don't use treated wood or cedar (which has a natural pesticide in it) for any raised planters or boxes that will contain food plants.
DON'T let your garden go fallow because the weeds will become very happy and prolific in that rich terra preta soil, and it will be a lot of extremely hard work to remove them (as we learned the hard way). As some vegetable plants begin to die out, put in new vegetable plants that will grow in the seasonal weather where you live, so that the garden is as productive as possible all year round.
UNTIL NEXT YEAR'S SEQUEL, HAPPY GARDENING!
OK, I'm done for now. So I'm off to the patio to sit in the shade and read that book while Mike takes his turn in the house, proof-reading this.
We would love to hear from you about how your terra preta is doing.
Happy gardening!
