Peppers Vs Tomatoes: Which Are Easier To Grow?

Peppers and tomatoes are both beloved projects for home gardeners, and with good reason — it's difficult to enumerate just how many dishes are made more delicious by including these two veggies. When push comes to shove, however, tomatoes are the king of the American garden. According to the National Gardening Association tomatoes are the most popular home-grown vegetable (86% of home gardeners grow them), and the amount of tomatoes that Americans eat per year is astronomical. Sweet peppers are still in the top five, though, so which is easier to grow? If you go by the (many, many) social media posts on this topic, gardeners seem to feel that tomatoes is the answer.

In a Reddit thread entitled "Tomato plant vs pepper plant," the former photo showed a bushy, thriving plant, while the latter was stunted and small. A Facebook discussion of tomatoes compared to peppers had many commenters bemoaning how long it took peppers to flourish, while tomatoes were rated fairly easy to get started. Elsewhere on Facebook: "My bell peppers are so small! I never have luck with them. I can grow any other type of pepper with great success, so why are bells so hard?? I've been trying to grow bells for 8 years." Meanwhile, Redditors sang the praises of toms: "Yes, it really can be that easy. There are a million different ways to make your plant produce more efficiently/better etc. But it is not rocket science. I find that tomatoes are a great confidence boosting starter plant with a high degree of success relative to the work you must do."

Many gardeners have had considerable luck with growing tomatoes in home gardens, to the point that we mused on the topic of easy ways to use up all our excess garden tomatoes. It's widely-agreed that tomatoes are a user-friendly crop that grows well in containers and in garden beds, and doesn't require a lot of nit-picky care to thrive and produce a juicy, rewarding harvest. In fairness to peppers, however, most of the social media denizens mentioned above didn't think that they were impossible to grow; they just require a bit more know-how and patience. If you know the best fertilizer for growing peppers and are willing to wait them out — perhaps even an extra growing season — you might just be surprised by your plants' yield. Tomatoes promise quick, abundant rewards, while peppers reward you for patience and persistence. It's easy to reason that beginning gardeners would want a more reliable, quick result, so tomatoes get the sash for "easier" growing.

At the end of the day, good gardening technique and plenty of research will ensure that no single plant is off the table when it comes to success. Most garden veggies have specific needs in terms of water, sunlight, fertilizer, and growing companions. Knowing all this minutiae will greatly increase your odds of healthy, thriving plants. Tomatoes have needs that are easy for novice gardeners to meet, which gives them a positive (and not unearned) reputation for ease, while peppers might need a little more TLC. That doesn't mean that peppers should be avoided; you just might have to up your garden game to make them successful.