This article is from Sundays Camp Verde Bugle
CAMP VERDE - Wally Dillon seems to think that growing tomatoes is simple.

"You just stick [the seeds] in the ground and hope that bugs don't come," the 86-year-old Camp Verde resident says.

Dillon and his 84-year-old wife Sallie have been growing fresh produce for years, selling much of it at the Verde Valley Farmers' Market since 2009. Now in its 11th season, Verde Valley Farmers' Market will again open on June 7.

The Dillons also grow peaches, apples, crookneck squash, zucchini, beets, carrots, okra and three kinds of onions. Sally Dillon picks okra from the garden three, sometimes four times each day leading up to the season opening of the market.

But Wally Dillon is known as the "tomato guy," according to Diane Scantlebury, owner of Tickaboo Ranch in Camp Verde. He is also known for his generosity.

"Nine times out of 10, when we're slow, he'll tell me to bring over a bag and fill it up with tomatoes," Scantlebury says.

Dillon "grows some really nice quality produce," says Jane Davie, manager of the Verde Valley Farmers' Market. "He always wants to be the first person with a tomato to sell at the market, even the first tomato at the first market. Wally always has a story to tell."

Since 2004, the Verde Valley Farmers' Market has offered fresh seasonal produce grown by farmers within a 50-mile radius of Camp Verde. Since 2004, 87-year-old Berta Hulsey has been selling two kinds of sweet onions at the market. But she says it was Lee, her late-husband, who had the green thumb in the family.

"He knew when to plant, and he seemed to do a lot of the weeding," Hulsey says. "When we first moved down here [from Flagstaff in 1983], I would can everything. Now, people tell me how good my onions are."

To grow some of the market's sweetest onions, Hulsey uses her instincts, a lot of hard work, and a bedside manner that would melt an ice cube.

"Berta is the sweetest person," Davie says. "I love that she has such a big smile and the cutest onions to sell."

Through Oct. 4, the Verde Valley Farmers' Market will be open Saturdays from 8 a.m. until noon at the ramada on Hollamon Street. For more information, contact Jane Davie at (928) 634-7077 or email jcdavie18@msn.com.