PEPPERS: Each year you repeat one of the most common errors about pepper growing: thinking you’ll plant them close together till summer, when they will have matured. That’s when the plants’ leaves gets so big that they touch. What happens next? Humidity is trapped by all that thick foliage, inviting disease.)
How wide apart should they be spaced, visually? See the chart above. But knowing why the numbers work help protect your crop.
Why Spacing Matters for Peppers
Of all these relatives, bell peppers need most room. This is a bushy, wide-growing pepper that needs extra space to grow. Crowding it will lead not only to lower yields but also conditions ripe for fungal problems (the leaves are too thick; there’s no air circulation).
Habanero and jalapeño hot peppers tends to be more cooperative. They’re upright, compact plants that don’t compete for space, and can fits into a smaller area without fighting for food or light. Tight hot peppers is compared to sprawling sweet ones above.
But that’s just numbers on a page, which don’t tell of good air flow or healthy soil. Remember: When these things grow up, what is the impact? If in the ground, they will have plenty of room to spread their roots, so go by highest recommended spacing (to avoid fighting among each other).
Containers are different; a smallish three- gallon bag is plenty big for compact, ornamental kinds, but the big bells need at least a 10-gallon pot, since it contain enough food and water to sustain a hefty plant. In fact, it’s not unusual in square foot garden, where fans tuck multiple plants such as hot peppers together closely, or squeeze a full four bell peppers into a typical raised bed. And since soil warms up faster in raised beds (different than row crops), and they also drain well, the tight quarters aren’t a problem at all.
Just don’t skimp on air circulation, you’ll only invite powdery mildew and bacterial spot by overlapping leaves so that moisture is trapped against stems. Prune out some interior branch if your plants start touching one another; that way the middle of the plant stay healthy and dry.
Also, training them changes how much room they need. A plant that’s staked to grow as one tall, vertical stem (think of peppers) has a narrow canopy and can therefore be spaced more closely than bushy plant that grows freely all around. That saves you some valuable real estate, which is what it’s about in a tiny urban garden where growing things is limited. More plants gets full sun this way, and no plant blocks the light for another. It’s a tradeoff between height and width.
Again: Where you plant things is important; but so is when. Don’t sow seed too early (eightish weeks before final frost date), and don’t transplant until soil is warm. Shifting a seedling from an indoor cozy spot to rough-and-tumble outdoors will shock it if you’re not careful, so be gentle by gradually adjusting during a couple-week period called “harden off.” Transplant only after the soil’s warmed for the season; cool, soggy roots stunting plants no matter what else you do right. Mulch around each plant to keep the soil temperature even and retain moisture between waterings. That’s one layer of the plan.
The companion-planting layer has more to it. If you grow basil, for instance make sure to keep it short (so as not to shade the peppers) and make a good neighbor. If there are nematodes in the soil, marigolds will help repel them. Avoid growing fennel, though: It gives off compounds that stop pepper development. This effect is small, but it could of be enough to ruin a season’s work.
When you space plants properly, each one get what it needs to set fruit… Not just to survive. Measure twice, plant once, then let the air keep the garden healthy from sprout to harvest.