Layout help

[Ment]

Hi everybody. I'm new to gardening and recently retired to Cyprus, where I plan to grow many of the fruit and vegetables popular here - tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, aubergines, courgettes, strawberries, peas, beans, carrots, cauliflowers etc.

Herbs I'll grow in pots on the patio, but for everything else I have a 30m x 20m area in front of the house that is bare, flat, and very dry due to the lack of rainfall, though the soil is reputedly excellent.

I'd like to plan the layout, as I know what will happen if I start planting things willy-nilly - a year later it will be all over the place. Any advice on layouts would be most welcome.

Secondly, which plants do better in the ground, and which ones do better in pots or raised beds?

Thanks in advance

 

[Oliver Buckle]

It is common to plan your plot in four equal parts. You then grow a different kind of thing in each part and move them around annually. That means you will not be growing things like potatoes, brassicas, or tomatoes in the same patch more than once every four years, that is important to control disease. Some things make good companions, others not. Plants make varied demands on the soil, from dry and not too rich, to water every day and fertiliser twice a week, and all stops between. Google is your friend here, especially for veg gardening; I favour the sites run by allotment groups and people like that, without a commercial axe to grind.

I Googled 'Horticultural groups Cyprus gardener' and was almost tempted off myself from pure curiosity, but came back to tell you first.

 

[Ment]

Thanks for that. The four equal parts is a good suggestion, and not something I immediately thought of.

As for Google......... I know I'll have to use it, but, like you, I hate the commercialisation of the site. Googling "garden layouts" got me dozens of links to people who want to come round and design my garden in exchange for cash.

Curiously, it never occurred to me to search for local groups, but there are plenty of links to groups here.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Here's a good start

Planning An Allotment Layout | Allotment Book

An introduction to planning an allotment layout, covering what to include, planting design, the principles of crop rotation, and practical tips.

www.allotmentbook.co.uk

There are lots of others, counterintuitively I always find RHS sites pretty useless, same goes for a lot of other big organisations, people like local allotment groups seem to be much more practical.

 

[nao57]

We've done raised bed experiments and pots and the ground, many experiments over the years. I try to do at least 1 experiment each year, and something new. ALWAYS, the raised beds where I'm at do more poorly and have less vegetables, and smaller vegetables than the ones directly in the ground. The raised beds can get hot and the roots aren't as protected from the heat and this is why. (The top of the plant may like heat, but roots don't). Pots... you can get them to work sometimes but they face similar issues.

The end result is, that when you are doing pots and raised beds you also have to water more often also because they get more stressed.

This isn't to say that you can't enjoy them. You can enjoy them and some people get them to work. But its like you are facing an uphill battle with them.

...

Another strategy is that you can do your experiments that aren't necessary to produce food or your flowers in the pots, etc and then do your other food producing plants in the ground.

...

You mentioned doing your garden in the front yard...

I have to ask, is that your only choice? In some places of the world, there's more trouble when other people can see what you are doing. Jealousy issues, or wanting to control people. You have a bigger advantage if you can sort of keep it out of sight, like in a backyard. Even if the law is on your side for property laws, there's all kinds of ways this can go south on you. When I kept bees, I ran into the idea also that people just started to say well its better to have people not know they are there and not see them instead of running the risk that they'll cause trouble over nothing.

 

[nao57]

Some places in the world, are now experiencing being 'food insolvent' also. This is another reason why its good for people to not see your garden.

 

[Ment]

Some places in the world, are now experiencing being 'food insolvent' also. This is another reason why its good for people to not see your garden.

There's nobody here lol, only farmers. My little house is set in the grounds of my brother's house outside a tiny village in Cyprus, and it's a 100m walk from his driveway to my front door. The complete opposite of my life in London!

 

[nao57]

There's nobody here lol, only farmers. My little house is set in the grounds of my brother's house outside a tiny village in Cyprus, and it's a 100m walk from his driveway to my front door. The complete opposite of my life in London!

Oh that's wonderful then. I've always liked rural places. That's the way to go. You have more freedom that way also.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

You have more freedom that way also.i

There is freedom to and freedom from. The choices become more restricted, but if the choices still include the ones you want ...

 

[Ment]

There is freedom to and freedom from. The choices become more restricted, but if the choices still include the ones you want ...

Good point. For convenience, it's nothing like living in a big city - there's no internet shopping here, for example, but, as our lives in the west become increasingly controlled by the circumstances we live in, the urge to break free from that leads to people making a choice like mine.

My Amazon deliveries have gone from 3 a week to zero, yet I'm not missing anything - perhaps there's no social or commercial pressure to constantly upgrade my life, and what I do lack is made up for by the fantastic weather and views.

It's certainly a simpler lifestyle, but one I'm happy to embrace.