Hi Charles,
After meeting Charles and Stephanie at the Sustainability Centre in Clanfield, Hampshire a few weeks ago and buying their new book “No Dig Organic Home and Garden”, I have been inspired to build some new raised beds at the bottom of my garden. I have an area 7m X 7m and will build 8 raised beds mostly 3m X 1.2m 220mm high. I have probably 3 cubic metres of compost which I have been religiously hot composting over the last couple of years using various ingredients obtained locally. It has regularly reached 60-65F using the Berkeley Composting method and given me lots of exercise turning it every 2 days for a couple of weeks. Whilst clearing the garden over the last 10 years we, have also accumulated a number of large builders bags of soil from various parts of the garden.
The area to be used is a mixture of grass and compacted soil. Probably 10 years ago an old shed and 6 overgrown fir trees were removed, leaving a lot of the roots in the ground. I still need to remove a big pile of rubble and various items of concrete and bricks from the area.
I would like to use the soil and compost in the raised beds. My question is on quantities of each to use. How about 3 or 4 inches of soil followed by 3 inches of compost? Some of the soil looks nice and dark and crumbly and some is just very hard compacted clay type. Our soil type is clay, so I expect it will be full of nutrients. I hope to have all my raised beds filled with soil and compost by Autumn, but will plant as soon as possible. I have one test bed already growing potatoes, onions and tomatoes and it’s looking good.
Thanks in advance for any advice and encouragement. Hope to see you at Homeacres sometime soon for more inspiration.
