The Plot
Being just south of Cambridge, Vine Cottage has a very alkaline soil with large amounts of chalk. When we moved here (in 2008), what is now the main vegetable patch was a raised and bricked patio. The garden isn’t massive and this patio was about the only part of the garden that was south facing and received significant amounts of sun. Given that there was also a second large patio next to the house, it was the obvious place for the veg patch. The soil beneath the patio was poor and contained large amounts of rubble though, so I built three raised beds which I filled with two tonnes of newly purchased topsoil. I improved the soil in the raised beds that already existed around the back and East side of the patio, and the “Strawberry patch” along the western edge by adding significant quantities of well rotted manure (from the local Shetland pony charity). The patch is south facing, with the eastern edge receiving shade in the morning (from the fence), and the North-West corner receiving shade in the late afternoon (from the neighbouring palm tree).
In autumn 2009, I created an additional bed in the centre of the lawn. Here again I incorporated a reasonable amount of manure, although not as much as I would have liked — by the time the soil had been dug over the level was already well above the surrounding lawn!
