In the Gulf the growing season is inverted, and it changes which land is worth looking at
I live in Dubai and my family keeps a small plot outside Al Ain, date palms and a few vegetable beds. Every visitor from Europe asks what we grow in summer. The honest answer is almost nothing. July and August are the dead season here. Our growing season is October to April, which is exactly when everyone else is shutting down.
That inversion decides more than the planting calendar.
Water comes first, before anything else. Ask where it comes from. Municipal line, well, or tanker delivery are three completely different futures. A well is not a guarantee either, salinity changes plot to plot and a neighbour having sweet water tells you nothing about yours. Tanker delivery through the summer is a real recurring cost, not a footnote.
Shade structures. Anything alive between May and September needs shade cloth or it cooks. Budget the structure, not only the seedlings.
And the thing nobody warned us about: a plot that looks lovely in January is a different place in August. If you can only visit once, visit in summer. Everything looks good here in winter.
When my cousin started looking at land north of the city I sent him to https://middle-east.realestate/ so he could compare across the emirates instead of trusting one broker in one town. The same plot size is priced very differently between emirates and seeing it laid out stopped him making a bad decision.
Happy to answer if anyone is curious how date palms actually work. They are far less romantic than people imagine.