Help laying out new vegetable patches

Hi there - new user here. Although I've planted up my 3 raised beds before, my crop success has been pretty much hit and miss, so this year I want to do things right.

I am going to use the Square Foot Gardening method, but decrease the number of plants per foot, since I read it's better for our UK weather. I'm also using Suttons Garden Planner tool.

I am confused between companion planting and something I read that says, rather than grouping vegetables of the same family and/or type together, you should mix them up to confuse predators. If so, would I plant, for example:

broccoli, celery, culiflower
culiflower, broccoli, celery

Rather than:
broccoli, broccoli broccoli...
culiflower, culiflower, culiflower...
celery, celery, celery...

Or, should they be mixed up even more to include more plant families that are compatable?

Please excuse if this is a silly question, but it's kinda confusing!

Thanks!

 

I can't see the point in mixing them up, although I do do that a bit by succession planting. For example, I sow 4 cauliflowers every two weeks (during the season). Once ripe they need to be eaten within two weeks, otherwise they are no longer viable. And I figure that we eat about 4 Cauli's a fortnight ... so I have four caulis in the Brassica bed, then whatever I planted next, then another 4 cauli's ... and so on.

BUT ... I only EVER plant Brassicas in the bed that is intended for Brassicas this year, and I religiously rotate the beds so that any bugs that love Brassicas have another 4 years before they see another Brassica plant.

(That depends how many beds you have, and how many years you can therefore get in your rotation.)

 

Thank you, Kristen and John. Whew, your advice is a relief! Keeping everything together will really make my life easier, especially as I'm going to plant new veg this year and I've no idea what the seedlings will look like!