I was wondering if anyone here had tried that. It seems like a good idea. That plant was way bigger than the rest.

Leslie

wrapping the cages will work much like a small green house, but you will need to watch for fungus disease. I have wrapped my cages with stretch wrap in the past, like the stuff used in shipping. I seldom do it any more because of disease. Sometimes I slip a clear trash can liner over some temporary stakes driven into the ground around the plant, that to is very temporary.

Larry

A wall of water would have the advantage of the high heat capacity of water which is slow to heat up but slow to cool off. After dark the wall of water would retain heat for a while. On a hot day the wall of water would not cook the plant because the water would moderate the temperature. I take mine off before the plant gets huge and use them again. They are expensive but good for some early plants and earlier tomatoes to eat. Those first tomatoes are worth the trouble. I will try the wrap idea this spring, thanks.

I would think it would be very hard to keep the heat at the right temp in a small space. I can see an advantage to having the sides wrapped, but not the complete cage. I would probably only wrap the sides and leave the top open, If you needed to cover it, you could throw something over the top. I have WOW and have used them a few years. One year I did actually get early tomatoes, but once the plants made those early tomatoes, they were finished. I think they were stressed out. Also birds and animals will try to drink out of them and may cause them to collapse on your plants. I'm not convinced that the little amount of water does a lot, but the protection from the wind is probably a big help.

I put my plants into the ground when they are fairly small and I also plant them deeper than they are growing in the pot, so they really look small when they go into the ground. Last year I put a piece of large PVC pipe around them. It allowed the sun to reach them, but kept the wind from knocking them around so much. I left it in place all year.

I am sitting in front of a window with the sun shining right now but the temp outside is 46. The sun is hot and a small enclosed space would heat up very quickly. In addition, with no wind movement at all, that seems to me to be asking for disease. I will not be planting into any enclosed spaces without air movement, or at least an open top for the hot air to escape.

I do find it hard to believe that Saran wrap would work better than a Wall-O-Water, because I cannot imagine it could hold in as much heat on cold nights as the Wall-O-Waters do. The plant probably was larger because the air trapped inside the Saran wrap would heat up more than the air outside the Saran wrap and the ground likely would heat up a little more because of the greenhouse effect, but the larger plant still would be about as vulnerable to freeze damage as smaller, unwrapped plants. And, if you leave the wrap on the cage until the foliage is touching the wrap, then any place the foliage touches the wrap will suffer freeze or frost damage on a freezing or frosty night.

I have wrapped tomato cages (but not the top) with 4 mm clear greenhouse type plastic in some years and while the plastic helps protect the plants from excessive wind in early through mid-spring, it also does reduce air flow which can contribute to diseases. I prefer using floating row covers because they allow proper air flow that can help reduce the incidence of some diseases. The 4 mm plastic doesn't even hold in enough heat to keep plants from freezing if the temps get right down to or below 32, so how in the world could the much thinner Saran wrap do that?

I've seen lots of "tips and tricks" for growing tomatoes over the years, and have found many of them just aren't as wonderful as folks make them sound.