Sept. 7 garden column: Salsa garden

salsa garden

Joe uses cattle panels to support his tomato plants in his salsa garden.

In my column in today’s Spokesman-Review, I’ve written a profile of another local gardener. His name is Joe Hutchinson and he is crazy about tomato salsa.

Each year, he grows a lot of tomatoes, onions, peppers and herbs so he and his wife, Donna, can bottle up 100+ jars of salsa as well as over 100 jars of marinara sauce. Wow.

salsa gardenHe used to grow a huge garden with all sorts of different vegetable crops, but soon found that he got the most bang for his buck by growing the ingredients for his own salsa. I thought folks would be interested to hear which varieties of tomatoes, peppers and onions he grows and what he does to get the largest yields possible.

salsa gardenI was hoping to have a photo of Joe working in his garden to share with you but he’s quite camera-shy so you just get to see his beautiful garden instead.

Here’s a link to my column: Salsa fan plants specialty garden. Enjoy!