Grow A Salsa Garden

NIGHTS have been so chilly this month that I’ve held off planting heat-lovers like tomatoes and peppers. But I started them from seed two months ago in the greenhouse and now they’re pawing at the door. They’re starting to flower. They’re too big for their pots.

So when Memorial Day rolled in, I wished my babies good luck and planted my salsa garden: three kinds of chilies, or hot peppers; two sweet-pepper varieties; two paste tomatoes, and one big juicy heirloom.

I’m growing about a dozen varieties of heirloom tomatoes this year, but my favorites for salsa are San Marzano, an Italian plum tomato that ripens to a brilliant red with clusters of five or six fruits on a vine, and Amish Paste, a large oblong tomato with a deep, sweet flavor. Both are meaty types that don’t turn to pulp when chopped, and are delicious cooked or raw. For contrasting color, I’m growing Yellow Brandywine, a juicy tomato with a rich flavor often lacking in yellow varieties.

Must-haves for chilies include jalapeño, a blunt three-inch pepper that can be harvested any time as it ripens from green to red; habanero, a wrinkled little fruit that can cause serious pain, so beware; and ancho-poblano, a heart-shaped flattened four-incher that is relatively cool for a hot chili. (When green, it is known as poblano; as it ripens to red, it is called ancho and can be dried for storage and used in smoky moles.)

Sometimes I also add a sweet pepper, Corno di Toro, to my salsa. This Italian frying pepper, which turns a gorgeous yellow, orange and red, is as sweet as the bell varieties but far easier to grow.

(White onions and garlic are key to a good salsa as well, but this isn’t the time to plant them: I started my onion seeds indoors in February, and set them out in mid-April, to give them time to grow sturdy green leaves before warmer temperatures and longer days trigger bulb growth. Garlic does best planted in the fall, when the cool soil encourages root growth.)

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