Do It Yourself! Plant Your Own Summer Salsa Garden

Put some sizzle in your veggie patch with the ingredients for a summer salsa – plant tomatoes, hot peppers, green onions and cilantro for a zesty harvest. This is an easy project for anyone to take on, it’s fairly inexpensive and has minimal steps. Just follow these easy steps and you’ll have a tasty salsa in no time!

Before getting started there are a few tools required for this project, you will need; a long-handled garden fork or cultivator, a garden spade, hand trowel, watering can, tomato cages, stakes or spirals. The materials required for your salsa are; a packet of coriander seeds, a cell pack of Roma type tomato seedlings, a cell pack of hot pepper plants, perfectly natural tomato fertilizer, perfectly natural garden & flower fertilizer and green onion sets.

Step 1: Prepare The Soil, in a sunny patch of the yard.

Step 2: Green Onions, or scallions, are the earliest of the ingredients to be planted. Purchase sets- young, ready-to-plant seedlings- in rows as soon as the ground is workable, spacing them 2.5-5 cm apart. Water well. Continue planting sets every few weeks for a succession of onions all summer.

Step 3: Coriander Seeds Can Be Sown, after the soil has warmed up. For a continuous harvest of tasty leaves, sow 1/3 of the seeds at a time, about every 2 weeks. Sow them in rows, about 1cm deep and 4cm apart. Water well.

Step 4: The Best Tomatoes For Salsa, are plum or paste types, which have fewer seeds and fleshier pulp than standard table tomatoes. Roma and San Marzano are readily available, but more unusual varieties such as the heirloom Amish Paste and yellow Banana Legs, which are typically available as seeds from specialty sources, can be fun to grow too. Purchase just enough for your family needs, a cell pack of six seedlings will go a long way.

Transplant seedlings into the ground once it has warmed up completely and all danger of frost is past. Remove the bottom few leaves from the stems before planting deeply into the soil. (Tomatoes grow roots along the length of their stems, so deep planting results in sturdy bushes) Space transplants between 30 to 45cm apart.

Step 5: Stake or Surround, each plant with a tomato cage. Water well.

Step 6: Young Pepper Plants, can be placed in the garden when the tomatoes go into the ground. Depending on your tastes, select hot varieties such as Cherry Bomb or milder ones like Garden Salsa. Plant them no deeper than the plants are growing in their pots. Water well.

Step 7: Water Regularly, and fertilize throughout the growing season.

There you have it! 7 easy steps and you’ve got a tasty salsa to enjoy all summer long with friends and family. It’s a fresh and inexpensive way to add something extra to those summer bbq’s! ENJOY!

Source: Home Depot Canada