Plant Herbs & Flowers with Your Pepper Plants

Peppers are one of my absolute favorite things to grow in my kitchen garden, but that doesn't mean I want a raised bed filled with nothing but peppers. Planting like that gambles the success of your entire growing season on just one type of plant. It also means your harvest basket's over there collecting dust while you wait on your peppers to grow.

What you want to do instead is fill in the space around your peppers with herbs, flowers, and veggies. Good pepper companions include plants that either repel pests or attract beneficial insects to prey on those pests. These plants also need to grow in the same season as peppers and not mind when your pepper plants cast some shade.

Let's look at pepper companion planting.

How Peppers Grow Best

The best pepper companion plants will share similar growing preferences, so keep these four things in mind when you're planning out your vegetable beds.

PEPPER TEMPERATURE PREFERENCE

Peppers love warm weather, when the temps range from 65 to 85°F. Don't plant peppers in your garden until all chance of frost has passed. Hot peppers can typically handle temps above 85°F better than other varieties.

PEPPER SUNLIGHT NEEDS

Your pepper plants need between 8 and 10 hours of sunlight a day to produce tons of little peppers for you. Smaller plants like herbs, bush beans, and leafy greens are ideal to grow around the base of peppers because they don't block sunshine from the leaves.

PEPPER NUTRIENT NEEDS

Peppers like to have a lot of nutrients in the soil. When they first start fruiting and flowering, you want to add an organic fertilizer high in potassium and phosphorus to ensure they have everything they need to be productive.

PEPPER WATERING PREFERENCES

Peppers love one good soak per week, though recently transplanted peppers should be watered every day. Established pepper plants need about 1 inch of water per week.

My Favorite Types of Plants to Grow with Peppers

There are so many delicious plants to grow in the warm season right alongside your peppers. I recommend growing peppers in raised beds or containers that are at least 18 inches deep so that they have plenty of room to send their roots deep. This raised bed height also allows you to grow pretty much any other annual veggie you'd like.

Let's start off by looking at pepper companions that will help protect them from pests and disease.

PEPPER PLANTS AND FLOWERS

The goal when growing any type of fruiting plant—peppers included—is to attract as many beneficial insects into your garden as possible. These insects will, of course, ensure that every little pepper flower gets pollinated so it will turn into a fruit. That means a bigger pepper payload!

While they're moving pollen around, these bugs might also help you take care of some pepper pests. Ladybugs and lacewings pray on many types of pests, including aphids and even small caterpillars. Parasitic wasps (don't worry—they're harmless to you) have their own special way of taking care of pepper menaces like hornworms.

All of these beneficial insects are attracted to flowers for their pollen and nectar. Thus, we want to plant as many flowers in our garden spaces as possible.

Some of the best flowers to plant near peppers are mini sunflowers, calendula, cosmos, zinnias, and marigolds. These flowers all come from the daisy family and share a wonderful trait: they're what we call composite flowers. That just means the center of each bloom is actually made up of many smaller flowers. Pollinators love them some composite flowers because they can drink to their heart's content while hanging out on one bloom.

Calendula also makes for an excellent trap crop, meaning it'll attract any aphids that would otherwise go to your pepper leaves.

Marigolds have their own pest-fighting magic up their flower sleeves. They release a compound called pyrethrum that actually repels the moths that lay hornworm eggs. For this reason alone, you should always plant some marigolds near your peppers. Think of marigolds and peppers as the peanut butter and jelly of your vegetable garden.

Some other beautiful flowers you could grow near your peppers are salvia, angelonia, and alyssum.

PEPPER PLANTS AND HERBS

You know how peppers and cilantro go together so well in pico de gallo? Well, they also pair well in the garden. Here's the thing: Cilantro doesn't actually like growing in warm weather. It prefers cooler temps and will bolt, or go to seed, when the temps rise. But that's perfectly alright. In fact, that's ideal for our pepper plants. The dainty flowers of cilantro are magnets for beneficial insects that will pollinate your plants and control pests. The same goes for dill and parsley.

You can also grow peppers near any herbs from the mint plant family (so basil and then all our favorite perennial herbs like rosemary, lavender, sage, thyme, and oregano). The strong scents of these herbs repel a number of different pests. Lavender, for example, repels whiteflies and spider mites. Basil repels thrips.

PEPPER PLANTS AND ALLIUMS

Alliums include onions, garlic, leeks, shallots, and chives, and these gals make incredibly beneficial companions to fruiting plants in your vegetable garden. Their strong scent repels the most common garden pests that feed on your pepper plants, including aphids and hornworms.

Chives grow well in the cool, warm, and even hot season, so they're my favorite pepper companion. I plant chives around the borders of all of my raised beds to serve as a near-year-round form of organic pest control. Bonus: when chives flower, those pretty little blossoms attract tons of pollinators.

PEPPER PLANTS AND LEAFY GREENS

It's a great idea to plant lots of low-growing leafy greens around your peppers to fill empty spaces (bare soil is a no-no). Leafy greens that grow well in warm weather include arugula, mizuna, and mustard greens.

If you've got some lettuce plants hanging in there, you can also use your pepper plants to give struggling greens some much-needed shade.

Larger leafy greens like Swiss chard and kale can hang on in warmer weather, and these gals also make great neighbors for peppers. Just make sure that their leaves aren't blocking too much sun from your pepper plants.

OTHER FRUITING PLANTS TO GROW WITH PEPPERS

Fruiting plants love friends. One of the easiest plants to grow around the base of peppers is bush beans. Beans in particular are great because they actually improve overall soil health. You could also do cucumbers and pole beans if you have trellis space.

Some gardeners say not to grow tomatoes with peppers because they're in the same family and can suffer from the same type of pests and disease. I've never had an issue with this. I say grow them side by side as long as your peppers don't grow too tall and cast too much shade on your tomato leaves. The same goes for eggplant.

What Would a Raised Bed Filled with Peppers & Good Companion Plants Look Like?

The planting plan I've included below is for a 4' x 4' raised bed in the warm growing season. You'll notice we've got rosemary and thyme in the corners of the raised beds for pest protection, beauty, and production. I filled in the rest of the raised bed border with purple mizuna, which doesn't grow very tall at all. Then I've interplanted some short zinnias with shishito peppers. The zinnias will really spread out and keep the soil covered.

The circles you see are three obelisk trellises, which are perfect for growing cucumbers vertically. You can plant one plant inside and then several more plants around the trellis to maximize growing space.

This here would be a really beautiful, colorful, and productive bed.

Fill Your Garden with Leaves, Roots, & Fruit!

Don't grow those pepper plants alone. Surround them with tons of herbs, veggies, and flowers so that you have other things to harvest while you're waiting on those peppers to finally produce already. Your pepper plants will thank you. Not only will your garden suffer fewer pest issues, you'll also be more likely to step outside and tend your peppers if you know there's something else waiting on you to harvest it.

Thanks for being here and helping to make gardening ordinary!