The Easy-To-Grow Veggie To Plant Next To Your Peppers For A Better Harvest

Peppers are fairly hardy plants that do well in many conditions, making them a go-to choice for many summer gardens. In fact, peppers can even grow spicier if you refrain from watering them too much; so they can also be reliable, hands-off residents of your veggie garden. Still, companion planting for a better outcome is never a bad idea, and planting spinach next to your peppers is a surefire way to see better results with an additional harvest.

Spinach is a pretty underrated vegetable to grow in the summer, largely because it's so cheap in stores already that most people don't bother planting it themselves. However, when planted in your garden, it can have a marked effect on fruit-bearing plants, particularly peppers. Since you can grow it quite densely, it ends up being a pseudo-ground cover that prevents direct sunlight from evaporating the moisture in soil. This same fact also helps it choke out weeds before they even start, guaranteeing that you get a maximum edible harvest for every square inch of your gardening space. Plus, spinach has a surprisingly deep tap root, while peppers prefer a wide, rather than deep, system, so the two shouldn't interfere with each other.

Even if you don't like spinach and would just compost whatever you grow, you can still get a lot of value from this leafy green. It's an excellent trap crop, one that attracts pests that would otherwise feed on your peppers. Keep in mind that growing spinach is a numbers game, so losing a few leaves here and there is no big deal, whereas peppers need tons of leaves to photosynthesize.

While both spinach and peppers are pretty forgiving, maximizing your harvest is all about scheduling your garden labor. The key is to ensure that your spinach doesn't outgrow your peppers in height at any point, so staggering planting, planning proper fertilization, and knowing when to harvest are important factors to keep in mind.

Many of the plants you should never grow around peppers tend to choke them out as seedlings, and spinach can still do this as well. To prevent this, it's important to give your peppers a bit of a head start over the rapidly growing leafy green. Plan to either sow peppers seeds a couple weeks before spinach or transplant an already-started plant to make sure it gets enough sun and establishes a strong root system. This will also allow you to fertilize both plants adequately without accelerating your spinach's growth too much for young, small pepper seedlings.

You can start to harvest spinach after roughly six weeks of optimal growing conditions, though it may take a bit longer once the summer heat sets in. Many types of spinach thrive most during cooler seasons, so for companion planting with summer-loving peppers, make sure to choose heat-tolerant varieties. Rather than deprive your peppers of their new friends, let them make new ones! Spinach is incredibly easy to grow from seed, so once you've harvested a spent plant, simply remove the remainder and sprinkle in some new seeds to guarantee season-long harvests. You can also pick the outer leaves individually while leaving the center unpicked; this will make for cut-and-come again spinach plants.