I WILL always remember as an eight-year-old my parents vain attempt to grow vegetables for the first time in the garden of a house we’d only recently moved to close to Carlisle, writes TOM ATTWOOD. The garden was a delightful orchard and included some veteran trees that groaned under the weight of their bounty of cooking apples every autumn. They did, however, dominate the garden and as such light levels weren’t great with a carpet of dappled shade across the ground for most of the growing season. These are not the conditions to grow vegetables as they soon discovered having cleared some soil and sown some seed. Weeks later all that were produced were thread-like wispy carrots and lettuce plants that instantly went to seed (sorry mum and dad I’m chuckling to myself just thinking about it). In fact, the only real success was the rhubarb patch that could tolerate the low light and made the most of having very little competition around it. There is, however, more to life than rhubarb and the fundamental problem was that there was simply not enough light. To grow vegetables well, you need really good light (think of an allotment and how open they are). The only solution for my parents would have been to remove some of the trees (and they didn’t have the heart to do it) but that’s the only way things would have worked in the long term. If you’re considering building or digging out of an existing lawn area space to grow vegetables then think about existing trees that might not be doing much now but may well affect the setting as they mature. The other trick to get right is the depth of soil you’ll have as vegetables need good workable soil and without it you’ll be disappointed. If the natural depth is poor then installing raised beds to increase the depth is the simplest most effective method. Those are the two most important considerations and if you can embrace them then the world's your oyster and those carrots will be more tree trunk than thread like.