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.