Allotments 4 All

Curious as to whether there is any real difference to whether beds run North-to-South or East-to-West?

Maybe this has been covered before or maybe it is totally irrelevant - as I said, just curious.

Mine actually run both ways either side of a pathway but wonder what others have determined.

It seems to be generally held that rows of plants should run NS so the plants get equal dibs at the sunshine during the day.

In books about beds it always says run your beds NS if you can. BUT I grow my crops (mostly) in rows or blocks across my beds i.e. not longwise, so I have organised the beds EW on my plot so the short rows run NS. I think the advice in the books assumes you grow a row along a bed.

This year I'm going to pay more attention to putting short plants at the S side and tall at the N side to maximise light on the plants on the whole plot (sound of brains frying as I try to rotate crops too ;)) And one day I will try angling a whole EW bed in a S direction - building up the N side - to see if that hastens on the crop.

A while back, I believe in a crop rotation thread someone mentioned that they have divided their crops into two groups. Tall and short, the tall ones are planted and rotated on the north side of their veg plot and the short ones on the southern side.

I have to run with the tide - up there, I have to have them E-W. Back here, it's N-S.

I would prefer the latter.

It will be the crop rotation that will do me in. I have the E-W row as that is where my sweetcorn is going to be and wanted them at the back (as it is to me) so they cast no shadows.

All well and good for a single season but rotation makes it a bit more thought-worthy.

Does anyone remember that the whole Victorian Kitchen Garden (in the programme/dvd) was angled South, about 6 ft lower at one end than the other? I just got the dvd, and this gem was in January's programme, explaining why the boiler room had to be sunk so deep underground.

I don't feel like banking up the whole plot ???, but will experiment with south facing banked-up beds this year - with added confidence now I've seen it on TV! ;D

All our plots seem to run east-west. I was surprised. :o