Chili peppers and green beans are both common vegetables with high demand. Many people consider intercropping these vegetables to double their profits. So, can chili peppers and green beans be intercropped together? Let's find out.
Can chili peppers and green beans be intercropped together?
Chili peppers and green beans can be intercropped. Both are summer crops with similar growing conditions, preferring hot, sunny, and humid climates. As legumes, green beans absorb nitrogen from the air through symbiosis with rhizobia, while chili peppers obtain nitrogen fertilizer from the roots of green beans. This means that chili peppers and green beans can mutually promote growth and increase yield.
What else can be intercropped with chili peppers?
1. Elevated Vegetables
Elevated vegetables typically refer to vegetables like cowpeas, cucumbers, and loofahs that require trellises for their vines to climb, facilitating growth and harvesting. These vegetables occupy a significant portion of the growing space, leaving ample room at ground level. Therefore, ground space can be fully utilized for planting chili peppers, but attention must be paid to intercropping distance and planting time.
2. Corn
Corn has a shorter growth cycle and its main stem is taller than that of chili peppers, so it provides better shade. If corn is planted in a chili pepper field, it will be beneficial in most cases and will not cause any harm to the chili peppers.
3. Sweet potato
After planting chili peppers, you can plant some sweet potato vines around them. This is very beneficial for the growth of the chili peppers because the vines grow on the ground. When harvesting chili peppers, you can often turn over the sweet potato vines to encourage fruit setting. The combination of the two is quite perfect.
4. Low-growing crops
Intercropping low-growing crops in chili fields, such as when we grow chili peppers in greenhouses , usually involves preparing the land, creating ridges, and digging planting holes before transplanting the chili seedlings . After the chili peppers are planted or have survived, we will sow some low-growing leafy vegetables such as bok choy, cabbage, purslane, and fennel in the furrows of the chili field.
