Relay Cropping Bell Pepper and Tomato: Effects of Cropping Sequence and Transplanting Date

Vegetable growers in Florida face rising production costs, reduced crop value, and competition from foreign markets. Relay cropping is a variant of double cropping, where the second crop is planted into the first crop before the harvest is finished. This cropping system may be a potential solution to lower production costs per crop by sharing some inputs for two crops. The objectives of this study were to determine the effect of cropping sequence and transplanting date of the secondary crop when relay cropping tomato and bell pepper. Two field experiments were conducted at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Balm, FL, in 2018 and 2019. In the first experiment, tomato was grown as the primary crop and bell pepper was added as the secondary crop, with multiple transplanting dates (8 Aug., 23 Aug., 7 Sept., and 24 Sept.). The second experiment had the same setup but the reverse cropping sequence. Bell pepper yield as the secondary crop was reduced by 65% when grown with tomato as the primary crop compared with bell pepper planted alone. Transplanting date had no effect on bell pepper yield (P = 0.091). Tomato yield was unaffected by the presence of the secondary crop. In the second experiment, tomato yield as a secondary crop was 36% lower when grown with bell pepper as the primary crop compared with tomato crop alone (monocropped). However, tomato yield was significantly reduced by the presence of bell pepper only when tomato crop was planted within 30 to 45 days after planting bell pepper. Based on these results, we recommend relay cropping tomato as the secondary crop within 30 days of planting of bell pepper as the primary crop. However, we do not recommend relay cropping bell pepper as the secondary crop with tomato.