When I close my eyes and dream of summer, the warm sun on my face and the green plants all around me, one of the distinct smells that comes to mind is the smell of a just picked, sun-warmed tomato.

The magical fruit that gives to us in so many ways and can be stored and opened in the winter to remind us that the cold won’t always last, that snows will melt and the ground will warm again.

We bought a flat of 48 cherry tomato plants this past weekend, waited for the 30 degree cold snap to pass and tonight we were able to plant them in our garden. We planted all 48 in a 4×4 bed and nestled them in with a couple inches of straw mulch and a good watering.

This is the experiment. Planting this way goes against many of the things I have read about successfully growing tomatoes, but we think it will work. There are four cages for support, and the rest of the plants will support each other.

We have several reasons for wanting an abundance of cherry tomatoes: to eat by the handful all the days of summer, to share with family and friends, and to do this again:

We sliced up the tomatoes, put them on a cookie sheet in the oven at 225F for an hour and let them cool. There are variations that use different seasonings and olive oil, but we didn’t use anything other than a non-stick cookie sheet, and it worked fine. When they cooled, we put them in canning jars in the refrigerator and enjoyed them well into winter. So our experiment is to make as many jars as possible for next winter.

One of the greatest adventures, for me, is spending spring in the garden and not knowing what the end of summer will bring. It’s never quite what I expect, but it’s always delicious =)