Sept. 7 garden column: 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.

He 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.

I 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!