We’re not talking pico de gallo here, but salsa! 

If an evening with your special someone, some homemade salsa made mostly or entirely from your own garden, and some chips to dip in it sounds pretty good, you’re in luck. Growing the ingredients for a delicious, personalized homemade garden salsa is easy, inexpensive, and you are pretty likely to be successful. 

Salsa garden site requirements

The ingredients we love in salsa are pretty standard garden vegetables, and they all perform best in full sun. One 4'x8' raised bed with good soil, well-watered, and in full sun will easily provide ingredients for several batches of salsa. In fact, you may find it fun to create one bed called the salsa bed, with tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, onions, and perhaps some cilantro. 

But don’t despair, patio gardeners. You can grow the same ingredients in pots on a deck, balcony, or patio. You’ll need larger containers to let the tomatoes reach full size. A container the size of a five-gallon pail (you can actually use a five-gallon pail if you drill drainage holes) will easily support one full-sized tomato plant. Sweet and hot peppers also do well in containers, and a deep, rectangular window-box style planter will grow quite a few onions. 

How many plants do you need?

Tomatoes make up the largest portion of the harvest, and for many recipes you’ll want about 8-10 pounds of tomatoes for a full batch. Since tomatoes on a plant don’t usually ripen all at once, you’ll likely need at least 3-4 tomato plants to get that yield. However, if you aren’t canning your salsa, then making a partial batch is fine. If you’ve only got a handful of tomatoes, you can still pare down the recipe to make a fresh salsa treat. 

Two pepper plants should provide the sweet peppers you need, and two hot pepper plants will likely yield more hot peppers than you can use in salsa. 

You’ll only need a couple of onions, and they can be tucked in anywhere there is an open spot with full sun and good drainage.

If you’re adding corn, black beans, or other garden ingredients to your salsa, estimate how many plants you need based on your likely tomato harvest. For example, one or two ears of sweet corn might be all you need (although you’ll need to plant a block of corn for proper pollination), or the black beans from 2-3 plants. 

The main ingredients

The three main ingredients in regular salsa are tomatoes, peppers, and onions. However, if you're after salsa verde, you’ll need tomatillos instead of tomatoes. Two tomatillo plants will probably give you more than enough of the little green fruits. I once planted a dozen, and that was a mistake.

Start your tomatoes, peppers and onions indoors. Transplant tomatoes and peppers outdoors about two weeks after your last spring frosts, when the weather and soil are warming. Onions can go out earlier.

Hot peppers can suffer from lower germination rates, so plant a few extra of everything, just in case. Hot peppers can take quite a while to mature, so if your growing season is shorter, choose a variety that matures faster.  

Tomatoes

In a perfect world, paste tomatoes are the choice for salsa and other processed tomato products. They are meatier, with less juice, and you’ll spend less time cooking them down. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t use whatever tomato you have. If ‘Black Krim Beefsteak’ is the only tomato you have in the garden, go for it. You can either run it through a food strainer (which removes the skins, core, and seeds but results in a purée texture) or simply cook it down longer. 

Peppers

Many recipes use chopped bell peppers, and most also call for hot peppers. Both are easily grown in the garden, provided your growing season is long enough. Unless you like it super hot, steer away from the hottest peppers and choose those in the middle of the spectrum instead. 

Many bell pepper types are crunchy, but they can taste a bit bitter when picked green. For salsa, I like them to start turning their final mature color, whether that's yellow, orange, or red. The extra sweetness and flavor come through in the final product. 

The flavor and the heat of hot peppers improve as they ripen on the plant. A jalapeño left on the plant to turn red (they eventually do) is more flavorful and can have more heat than one picked green. Use this to your advantage, or at least keep it in mind. This past summer I had some peppers classified as mild that, when picked green, had just the slightest pleasant hint of heat. I let some stay on the plant until they turned a beautiful fire-truck red, used them in the same dish, and got quite the surprise! They were delicious, but the heat was far from “mild” once they had truly ripened. 

Onions

White onions are the normal recipe ingredient, but I use yellow onions too, if that’s what I have on hand. Either type is easy to grow from seed if you start early enough. Onions don't compete well with weeds and have shallow root systems, so mulching is important. I use clean grass clippings, but any natural material like pine straw, shredded leaves, or other straw will work.

Remember, onions are categorized as short, intermediate, or long-day varieties. Choose onions that suit your location. The guideline is: short-day onions in the South, long-day onions for the North, and intermediate-day onions anywhere but the northern or southern extremes.

A note on timing

Tomatoes and sweet peppers often start ripening at the same time; however, you may need to give the hot peppers an extra head start. Start them indoors a few weeks earlier than the tomatoes. Onions, however, are often ready for harvest weeks before the tomatoes and peppers are ripe. Because my soil is well-drained, I often leave my onions in the bed until the rest of the ingredients are ready. Unless the weather becomes excessively rainy, it’s okay to leave them in the ground a few weeks after they are mature. 

Cater to your own salsa preferences

I like my salsa thicker, so it doesn’t run off the chip or drip down my chin when I scoop a load onto a tortilla chip and take a bite. Soupy salsa isn’t my favorite. I also like to taste the individual components, and for me, it should be a bit chunkier, not smooth like ketchup. 

A little heat, just enough to be flavorful without needing a glass of milk, is sublime. But that’s me. Sometimes I like black beans in my salsa, sometimes I don’t. The beauty of a garden salsa is partly the satisfaction of knowing you grew it, the terroir, if you will, of your own garden, and partly that you can experiment and make it perfectly suited to you. 

Safety note: salsa can be frozen, then thawed and brought to room temperature for serving, and for fresh or frozen salsa, you are free to experiment with ingredients as much as you wish. 

If you wish to can your salsa, many recipes are available that are safely processed with a water bath canner instead of a pressure canner. However, you must strictly follow those recipes regarding the volumes of ingredients and the pH adjustment (usually vinegar or bottled lemon juice). The spices can usually be adjusted without affecting the safety of the canning process. But don’t simply add more peppers or use less vinegar. And of course, follow a tested canning recipe from a reliable source such as Ball, a university Extension service, or the National Center for Home Food Preservation, not just any old thing found on social media.

Secrets to good garden salsa

My first homemade salsa was okay, but it wasn’t great. Now, I’d rather have my own than any store-bought variety. Here are a few tips for making great salsa I’ve accumulated over the years 

Cook it down

All tomatoes contain quite a bit of water. Salsa that isn’t cooked down far enough is more like thin tomato juice with chunks. The flavor doesn’t fully develop, and it is messy to eat. Take the time to simmer the salsa until it thickens, like what you’d expect from a quality store-bought product.

Enjoy it at room temperature, not ice cold out of the fridge

Like a good red wine, salsa is best enjoyed at a moderate temperature. When it's too cold, some flavors get masked. Let your salsa warm up, or if you are in a hurry, give it a quick shot in the microwave. 

Use meaty tomatoes

Flavorful, meaty paste tomatoes will make the process easier. If you don’t have a food strainer, starting with meaty tomatoes can save you quite a bit of time on the stovetop. 

Don’t be afraid of a bit of heat

Even if you don’t like spicy food, a little hot pepper in the salsa goes a long way toward bringing out the flavors of all the ingredients. Salsa typically mellows a bit, so if it is a touch too hot when you first prepare it, don’t worry too much. If, at eating time, the heat is still a bit much, serve it alongside guacamole, or with a bit of sour cream on the side. 

Taste it as you cook it down

The easiest, and tastiest, way to ensure your salsa is exactly as you like it is to sample it as you cook it down. Grab a spoonful, and check the salt, heat, and spices as you go. Remember, it is always easier to add more salt and impossible to take some away, so adjusting salt levels in small steps is a good idea.