What is your favorite tomato cage?

[hiker125]

I used a trellis type system last season and the weight was too much for the trellis netting, so I had to resort to those cheap conical wire cages. They are "OK", but not my favorite.

All the catalogs have some great ideas, but are they worth the price? Since I plan on growing about 60 plants, I need something a little more economical.

So, what has worked for you and what hasn't worked so well?

 

[Andy J]

I use concrete reinforcement wire to make my cages.It is 5' wide and 6" grid.A piece 7' long makes a good cage about 2'3" in diameter.I use a piece 5' long to make a cage a little more than 11/2' in diameter.This size works fine for me.

Over the years I scrounged leftover pieces of wire from construction jobs I worked on.Last year I bit the bullet and bought a 150' roll. I now have a total of 43 cages that should last me to the end of my gardening career.

The only problem is when growing indeterminate varieties during the long season where I live,the plants can grow much taller than 5'.I just train them horizontally over to the next cage for support.

Andy

 

[LVVCHAP]

I use concrete reinforcement wire to make my cages.It is 5' wide and 6" grid.A piece 7' long makes a good cage about 2'3" in diameter.I use a piece 5' long to make a cage a little more than 11/2' in diameter.This size works fine for me.

Ditto - I have a friend who is a masonry contractor. I have gotten pieces from him. My cages have been 18: in diameter. If put in clusters of three or four you can tie them together and eliminate staking.

 

[journey11]

I'm going to try out some cattle panels for this year. Usually I stake, but with so many plants, you get tired of tying after a while. The panels are heavy gauge metal and measure 16'x4' and usually run about $20 each. I've used them for cukes and prefer them for such. You just weave the vines through as they grow. I think it will work well for tomatoes too. Individual cages are just too expensive for me and I find them hard to pick the fruit through.

 

[hoodat]

I like my Tinkertoy tomato cages made out of plastic pipe and fittings. Right now they're knocked down and stored in the garage till I get my tomatos in this Spring.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I used cattle panels this year. I made stakes by splitting a 2x4 lengthwise, then cut these on a 45 degree angle to get a point, and drove them into the ground maybe 9" or 10" to each side of a row of tomato plants, putting these opposite each other. I put a pair of these stakes every 8 feet or so along the row of tomatoes.

Using bolt cutters, I cut one horizontal outside strand of wire of each cattle panel so I could push the vertical wires in the ground to help hold it in place. Then I put one cattle panel one each side of the row or tomatoes and used wire to tie them to the stakes and brace across to each other for stability. I used hog rings to tie the panel ends together lengthwise but that was not necessary.

I've tried trellisses in the past and was not satisfied. I find that I have to prune heavily or there is just not enough room to train all the suckers and branches to the trellis. I had to tie a lot of the branches too. Weaving was not enough for me with a single trellis. I can't imagine trying just a single stake per plant. Actually I can but probably not accurately imagine would be more correct.

I used 2" x 4" welded wire for that trellis and some of the larger varieties would grow inside the openings in the wire, cutting themselves as they grew. Black Krim was the worst. That's not an argument for or against a trellis, just something I noticed about choice of material.

With the cattle panels on each side of the row of tomatoes with the stakes, it was very stable even in our winds and there was a lot of room for the plants to grow without a lot of pruning. One disadvantage is the height. I had some varieties, Mortgage Lifter and Pink Brandywine for example, that grew out the top and then reached all the way to the ground. That 4' height worked for a lot of them, but some varieties really need a cage, trellis, or stake that provides more height. Do expect them to come out the top and spill over, so you need more room between rows than you might expect.

I did prune some to keep the base of the plants open for ventilation and I did tie a very few but weaving worked for almost alll of them.

 

[wifezilla]

I am also giving up on cages and going to give cattle panels a try. My tomatoes went nuts last year and overgrew every kind of support I had and harvesting was a total pain. I also lost quite a few tomatoes to bugs since stuff kept flopping over on to the ground.

I live near a Big R, which is kind of like a Tractor Supply or Fleet Farm. I will check prices on the cattle panels next time I buy duck feed.

 

[desertcat]

Just be sure to take a truck to get cattle panels. They aren't all that heavy, but they don't fold real well. I repurposed a few last year for my pole beans & cukes, but hadn't thought about sandwiching tomatoes between them...have to try that.

 

[ninnymary]

Ridgerunner..I was going to make cages out of the cattle panels. The panels that are at HOme Depot are around 4' by 7'. I only have space for about 7 tomatoe plants.

Do you think this would work better for me as opposed to sandwiching them?

How big of a diameter should I make them?

I wasn't sure how tall to make them. Using the 4' side seemed alittle short but flipping it to the 7' seemed too tall. How high do you recommend?

I'm not sure how many cages I would get out of one panel. Any ideas?

I didn't mean to hijack the thread but panels seem to be the best tomatoe cages/support.

Mary

 

[sparkles2307]

We use cattle panels for our peas. And the garden fence is made of cattle panels covered in chicken wire, and attached to "t" posts, which makes it easily removable in the winter for snow removal etc. If I can talk DH out of a few more I was thinking of using them for tomato cages as well, since mine seem to get too heavy for the cheap wire ones and knock them over.... last year I had to use baling twine and rebar to make slings and supports for the cheap cages. It was a mess to take down and harvesting was terrible!