They should grow fine together. I grew tomatoes with tabasco and jalapeno peppers in the same bed last year. Got great production.

Sure no problems.

The bottom 1/3 of each bed is steer manure compost, the other 2/3rds is garden soil with another thin layer of compost on top.

I assume you plant to till/mix up the layers together before planting, right?

Dave

*pause* See, told you I was new! I was not going to mix them together other than how they would mix once I dug out the holes to put the plants in. Would that be sufficient or do I need to go back and mix the entire bed?

They grow great together!

I would plant tomatoes on the far North/northeast and pepprs on
the south/southwest part. The reason, tomatoes will grow bigger and
much taller than peppers and you dont want your pepper in the shade.
Peppers love sun more than tomatoes too.

do I need to go back and mix the entire bed?

You'll have much better results if you do. Plants don't grow in layers but send out roots all through the bed at all levels. So you'll have better nutrient access for them as well as better drainage.

Dave

yeah maters and peppers grow good together been doing it for yrs / i even throw in some green onion and basil / i would work the soil and get it mixed up good

Every time I try to do it, the tomatoes grow bigger than I thought they would and completely shade out the pepper plants, and I get few to no peppers. I have also learned that peppers are very happy being closely planted with each other. Rather than intermix them, I think it works better to cram all the peppers on one end, and space the tomatoes out in the rest of the bed.

Carla in Sac

I would plant peppers on the NW side so they will get direct sun from noon-ish on. Peppers should be grown in pairs. I always end up with two plants to a pot and leave them together when transplanting into the garden. They help support each other. You might even want to tie them together at some point.

I've grown tomatoes and peppers together for years with no issue, although, I've found that my peppers do MUCH better when in containers. I guess with my zone it takes too long to heat up and I usually only get moderate to good production fairly late season.

I get earlier and more production in containers for peppers - and usually the opposite for tomatoes... Go figure.

P.S. - Since peppers and tomatoes are from the same family of plants, I've heard a good few funny myths about planting them together, my favorite one being: "Oh, you planted hot peppers next to your tomatoes, isn't that going to make the tomatoes hot, too?" :)

@everyone: Wonderful! I had initially planned to do tomato/pepper/tomato/pepper but will re-work the planting arrangement. I did notice the big size difference while browsing seedlings but didn't realize the maters could get in the way of my peppers enough to hurt production.

I will also make sure to mix the soil/compost well. So far the only bed that has been planted has been the artichokes and I've been assured they are tough to kill.

@homegardenpa: I'd heard the same thing about hot and sweet peppers and believed it *blush* until I started looking into planting them. ;)

Thanks!

I plant our peppers east all the way around to west-16" spacing from the caged tomatos. High desert nuclear sun is not the same as the normal idea of full sun. Along with the planting method I partially shade everything but the corn.

I wouldn't plant peppers in the same bed as indeterminate tomatoes simply because the tomatoes get huge... it is like trying to grow something under a tree. And peppers need as much sun as they can get. My okra was a total fail this year because they are in full shade under the tomatoes.

Not so, Grasshopper. Peppers do NOT need as much sun as they can get (south of New York!). Peppers (sweet) here seem to do well when planted in an intensively crowded plot with lots of mutual shading. One batch of nine bells grew up in a thicket of favas and did gangbusters until the heat eventually zapped the favas and the peppers started to sun scald. Eventually I woke up, did a full dope slap, and screened them from the sun with cloth, but they never fully recovered.

I should have said I was speaking of my garden specifically....