Have you grown tomtoes before? Have you grown them in a hot climate like ours with a long growing season? Do you routinely use stakes? I ask these questions for a reason and I'll explain.

I use cages made of woven wire fencing. While they are not quite as sturdy as cages made from Concrete Reinforcing Wire (CRW), they are sturdy enough for me and I like them because I can cut woven wire fencing myself, but have to get my hubby to cut CRW. Most of my cages are in three foot sections, with two sections held together with zip ties to give me a cage 6' tall, which is the minimal size I need for indeterminate tomatoes. I use wooden stakes to stake the cages, but don't stake the tomato plants themselves. For some of the larger, heavier plants like Tess's Land Race Currant, which often gets 9' tall and would go taller if I would stack a 4th 3' section on top of the three it gets, I use two 6' metal fence t-posts to stake those cages. Sometimes, later in the season when Tess is really heavy, I have to add two more metal t-posts. Other plants that often need metal t-posts to hold the cages upright include Black Cherry, Sweet Million, Brandy Boy, Porterhouse, Neve's Azorean Red and SunGold simply because the plants are so large and heavy with fruit.

Explaining all of the above is my way of stating why I find stakes alone to be inadequate. In our long growing season, an indeterminate tomato plant in good soil with adequate moisture can easily be 5' to 6' to 7' tall and 3' to 4' wide and some get even wider--Tess's Land Race Currant is a huge monster that gets about 5' wide.

A stake or two or three cannot support these large plants when they are loaded with ripening fruit, especially when a thunderstorm rolls in with heavy wind and sometimes hail. The last thing you want is for a storm to knock your plants, stakes and all, down onto the ground because foliage that is on the wet ground for even just a few minutes tends to get foliar diseases and that is the beginning of the end for your plants.

If you are going to use stakes as part of a Florida Weave, I'd still go with metal T-posts.

Some people use cattle panels supported by metal T-posts and I might have tried those had I not already had a couple of hundred cages when I moved here in the late 1990s.

If you've grown tomatoes in a part of the country where much of the foliage is pruned off, and therefore stakes are adequate, be advised that won't work here. Pruning off the foliage drastically weakens the plants and leaves your tomato fruits susceptible to (and, in fact, almost guaranteed to suffer from) sunscald which ruins the tomatoes. In our climate with the heat and intense sunlight, heavy pruning ruins your chances of getting a crop.

Even though many determinate plants only get 3' to 4' tall, they still get very wide and very heavy and I even cage those.

I have all kinds of stakes that I use to stake the cages. I buy surveyor's stakes in bundles of 25 or 50 at big box stores, and use the 3' tall ones to stake most tomato cages (2 to 4 stakes per cage depending on the ultimate size of the plant), but switch to 3' or 6' metal T-posts for the larger, heavier plants.

I harvest hundreds of large to medium-sized tomatoes and thousands of the smaller cherry, grape, pear, plum and currant-sized ones every year and wouldn't get those kinds of yields if the plants were not well-caged and well-staked.

Dawn

Thanks Dawn...it has been 3 years since growing here in Oklahoma and you have reminded me why cages are so good.

I'm a firm believer in cages, too. I made CRW cages, cut them myself and had hubby weld them together. (I could have just bent the wires around to join but was too cheap to waste that extra 6". LOL)

I have, on occasion, used t-posts as stakes for the oddball tomato but it's never even close to being tall enough. I've also used hog/cattle panels tied to t-posts (and tomato plants tied to the panels as they grow). Both of those will work and I do use them for oddly-placed tomatoes but I much prefer the CRW cages, as do the plants.

When I lived in a place that wasn't concrete-like clay with gazillions of rocks, I sometimes used tree branches scrounged from the woods.

Diane

Diane,

Do you mean to tell me there is a place that does not have concrete-like-clay with gazillions of rocks? And you left it to come here? (sigh) What it the world were you thinking? LOL

Dawn

And it didn't have Bermuda or Johnson grass, either!

What in the world WAS I thinking?!

Diane (who apparently didn't have enough challenges in her life at one point)

I'm from the north ... we didn't have Johnson or Bermuda either ... and lord do I miss that. I do not, however, miss the winters :-) Or the 4 month growing season.

The soil, on the other hand, was to die for ... rich loam in the Red River Valley (of the north).

Diane,

You were thinking that life was not tough enough and you needed some new challenges!

Brian,

The question is, is all that lovely loam going to wash downstream in this year's massive flooding along the Red River of the north? Looks like they are having another bad time there.

Dawn

I use CRW cages held in place with 6' pieces of rebar left over from home construction, and a few t-posts. I use 4' pieces of bamboo to tie the plants to in the first few weeks until they can be supported by the wide cages.

I tried the bamboo only (3 or 4 stakes each) last year on some plants, and boy was that a mistake. I bought some more CRW for this year. By the way, the CRW was really cheap at some lumberyard here in Tulsa just off of HW169. It was about $30 cheaper than the box stores.

The termites loved the wood stakes I used the first two years here.

Scott,

What lumberyard had the CRW? I was going to pass on getting some more this year because it had gone up so much in price from last year, but if you found a reasonable deal, I might give it another thought.

Thanks,
Jill

Oh, BTW for the rest of you as you might have guessed I love CRW cages. They are a pain to make, but once you've used them, they're hard to beat :)

Jill

Jill,

I got mine last summer at the lumberyard you recommended at 4700 Mingo Place or something like that. I think it was M&M Lumber or similar. When I got it, the price was under $80 but had gone up to $120 at HD. It's still $120 at my HD. I haven't looked anywhere else. Maybe that lumberyard has gone up a lot, too.

Dawn where do you store your cages.i would like to use crw for cages but i would have to make about 250 to 300 cages and i just cant afford that.so i am stuck with staking and using cheap tomato cages.thats probaly why my tomatoes do not produce very well and having a brown thumb

Storage is the least of my worries. We have 14.5 acres, so I just pile them up in a heap behind the barn/garage, out of view of the house and 'civilized' landscape area.

If you don't have a lot of space, make the cages different diameters so that you can fit 3 or 4 inside of one another. For example, cut one out of a 66" length of wire, another out of 60", another out of 54".....then, they all nest inside one another. Or, cut your wire, bend it into a circular shape, and use the strongest zip-ties, and several of them, to hold the wire in a circular shape. At the end of the season, cut the zip ties and lay the cages flat and stack them on top of one another.

I have 300 or more cages, but didn't start out with that many. I think I had about 40 when I moved here, and then kept making more every year when we kept adding more and more tomato plants. I don't grow 300 tomato plants any more, but grow everything in cages.....cucumbers, muskmelons, canteloupe, mini-watermelons like yellow doll, winter squash, peppers (in the cheap store-bought 3 or 4-ring cages), etc.

For a very large number of plants, I think you can get great results with the Florida Weave method. You'd have to use really strong 8' T-posts, but it is easy to put up, easy to take down, and easy to store the posts and just buy new twine every year.

I've linked info below on how one method you can use to do the Florida Weave. Read it and see if it sounds appealing to you. If you are in a high wind area, it might not work for you, depending on the topography of your land and your prevailing wind patterns during the growing season. To see other Florida Weave methods and styles just google Florida Weave.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: One Example of the Florida Weave Tomato Trellis

thanks for the info i might have to try that out on a role this season and see how it works.i would love to have all of your gradenig knowlage

Rocky,

My gardening knowledge has been earned the hard way.....by doing it all wrong, researching to figure out what I did wrong and how to do it right next time, etc. After a couple of decades of that, you find you've learned a lot (mostly the hard way).

I was blessed to have a dad who loved to garden, and grandparents and aunts and uncles and neighbors who gardened, and that helped too. Those "old-timers" are mostly gone now, but I carry within me everything they taught me, so when I am gardening, it is as if they are still with me. When you grow up gardening, though, there are things you just do because your family always did it and sometimes that is good, but not always. So, I am always reading and trying new things and seeing what works and what doesn't.

I learn a lot on this forum. Every day I still learn something new about gardening, even after all these years. I hope I never stop learning and changing and growing. It keeps life interesting.

Dawn

Owiebrain, you said you had used cattle panels to tie tomatoes to, I was going to try that this year to see how it worked out.(I've tried severly outher ways and haven't liked any of them.) Whats your overall opoinion of this method?

I would like to try CRW but its kind of expensive, whats the cheapest anyone has seen it in eastern Ok,?

For those of you who use stakes, if your close to McAlester theres a small wood molding business there that has bundles of leftovers about 8 to 10 feet long and 1 1/2" to 1" wide Oak and Poplar that they give away, cut to length they make great stakes and the oak lasts a long time.
They use to give away their sawdust and wood chips also,:) in fact they had so much they had to pay some one to haul it off.
I hauled a lot of that home last year, but that ended when someone made a deal with them to take it all, a sad sad day :(

I bought the CRW last summer for about $75 per roll. The roll was identical to the one at HD that sells for $120. M&M Lumber I think it was.

Yep, I did the hog panel trellis thing. It was okay, one step above plain staking, IMO, but not near as nice as caging.

I used it some volunteers that I couldn't bear to turn under so transplanted them into a tight spot along a building where there was no room for cages. I, being a lazy bum, preferred it to staking because 1) it was easier to tie them to it as they grew to jungle status, and 2) I only had to drive three t-posts into the ground to brace the panel, rather than one for each plant (I think I put 5-6 tomatoes along that panel? And I maybe could have put more along the backside if it weren't for the building in the way.

I also used it in the lower garden not long after moving here, before we had enough cages to go around. Same opinion that year.

In short, I'm glad I have CRW cages but, should I ever not be able to use cages again, I'll go with the panel trellis over staking (or even weaving which I've also tried).

Diane

Dawn, do you have a picture of your cages? I am afraid I have not done enough thinking about supporting my tomatoes.
Sammy

One year I used cattle panels and tied the plants to the panels. That was a pain. The plants were forever over-growing and needing to be tied again. I ran the panel down the center, lengthwise, of the raised bed. There were tomato plants on both sides of the panel. I reasoned that the weight of the tomatoes on the one side would stabilize the panel with the weight of the tomatoes on the other side. This reasoning was somewhat flawed, and we had to add more t-posts as we went along to keep the cattle panel stable.

The next year I decided to 'sandwich' my tomatoes between two cattle panels. So for two rows of tomatoes in a raised bed there would be three cattle panels, one down the center and the other two about 16" away from the center, on either side. This worked somewhat better and required less tying. But it was really hard to pull weeds and that was the year before I learned about mulching with grass clippings. If you do this, make sure that the side of the panel where the spaces are larger are nearest to the earth so that you can get your hands in to pick and/or pull weeds.

The following year, OkcDan linked the URL on this forum of a website where Tom Matkey was making tomato cages out of PVC pipe. The first thing you need to know is that this is definitely NOT cheap! But if you make just a few a year I think it's worth the effort. I do put a cheap wire tomato cage on the tomato plant first, while it is still small, because the pvc cage will not support a small plant. Then when the plant starts to outgrow the wire cage I just place a pvc pipe cage over it, leaving the small cage inside. It has worked well for me because there's no tying involved, the cage stakes itself so there's no falling over, and at the end of the season you just take them apart and store the pieces in crates. Even though they are initially expensive, you've got them forever.

I've linked Tom Matkey's website. In Googling trying to find it, I ran across a more economical version at http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/1997-02-01/The-Recycled-Indestructible-Tomato-Cage.aspx

There are other versions that turn up when you Google "pvc pipe tomato cages", too.

I don't have room to store CRW cages, although I have used a few of them before. I agree with Dawn that they work wonderfully well, except that they are difficult to store. I tried taking them apart and storing them flat, but they are almost impossible to get to lay flat once they have been bent to form a cage. DH got so annoyed at how they were always in his way that he disposed of them when we moved.

I use the cheap tomato cages for lots of things. Atwood's puts them on sale for 99 cents about this time of the year. I use them to mark where I have planted something in the yard, to protect small trees or bushes from getting cut down by the lawn mower, to keep the neighbor's cats from laying on top of new seedlings, to support bell pepper plants, and for pole beans to climb on. The cone shape allows them to be stored easily. They certainly have their uses, but not for tomatoes -LOL- once they grow past a certain point.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tom Matkey's PVC Tomato Cages

THank you, Ilene, and thank you for the link.
You need to watch out for PVC if you connect the pipes. THey are terrible for a rose trellis. Finally this year we had to cut our two climbers to the ground to take out the PVC trellis. The parts do not stay together even with glue. And later they do not stay together with wire strung across to strengthen them, and it isn't fun trying to get the wire to the pipe when it is holding Fourth of July roses.

Having said that and keeping things in perspective, we are only talking about a few months with the tomatoes, not a few years.

I think I made a big mistake in trying to plant more than one rose in a pot even if it is a whiskey barrel. Our pots are on a fence on one side, and I think I will do what the picture has for the other side. The Florida picture, I think runs more of the metal green stakes across, and connects them with wire to the other stakes.

A question. When you connect a stake to a wire, do you do a figure 8 with your connector, and keep the branch away from the wire? If yes, I need to use something other than velcro.

I appreciate all that you wrote. It is very helpful.

Sammy

Sammy,

I don't have any photos. I'm not a photo taker, although I guess I need to start. I'll google and find one similar to mine and link it.

To me, the important thing about the cages is that you put them around the plant, stake the cage to the ground, and you're done. With the Florida Weave, you have to go back periodically and add another layer of trellis twine, and with other trellises you often have to do some periodic tying or at least "weave" the plant through the trellis. With the cage, once it is up, you're done. Once the plant exceeds the top of the cage, the plant just starts "drooping" and growing back downward.

When I make a cage for a tomato in a container, I make the cage large enough that it fits completely around the exterior of the planter so I can stake the cage to the ground. If you put the cage into the planter, sometimes a very strong wind will blow over the cage and the planter, dirt, plant and all.

I found and linked a page that shows several different cages, including some made from woven wire fencing, which is what I use (I like that it doesn't rust), CRW and PVC Pipe. I do use galvanized wire fencing, but mine are made just like the CRW cage photo on the link. I just cut a few permanent "portholes" in mine the first year, so I could reach through and harvest tomatoes. Otherwise, it is hard to get your hand and tomato through the relatively little opening in the woven wire. I've never seen "C" cages like they have on the link, but it is an interesting idea.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Description/Photos of Tomato Cages

Hey all, I'm doing a little container gardening on my apartment balcony using 18 gallon self-watering containers. I have 2 Dwarf Husky, 3 Jelly Bean, 1 Sun Gold and 1 Arkansas Traveler, and I'm sure that all of them are going to need some sort of support as they grow.

What would be a good way to cage these guys? Does anyone know if there are any places that will sell shorter lengths of fencing? I'm in the OKC area. I'm not going to need, nor can I store a 50' roll of something, and I'm a little bit at a loss of how to do this.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

~Jenn

Jenn,

Would it be correct to assume one plant per 18 gallon container, or are you growing two per container? It matters with regards to caging them.

IF ONE PLANT PER CONTAINER: If you are growing two per container, you really wouldn't have room for two cages made of woven wire fencing, so in that case I'd just go to Lowe's or Home Depot and buy the sturdiest tomato cages they have--which hopefully will be either 47" or 52" tall if they haven't sold out of that size.

For the Husky variety, one cage per plant will do it.

For the SunGold, Arkansas Traveler and the Jelly Bean varieties, you need two cages per plant. Put one cage over each plant. When the plants get tall enough that they are about to grow up out of the top of the original cage, attach a second cage upside down to the first cage....so the largest ring of the upside-down second cage is resting on/attached to the largest ring of the right-side-up first cage. You can attach the cages to one another using plastic zip ties which you can find in the electrical department at a home center store or even at Wal-Mart. The plants should grow fine in these cages. If they begin to grow out of the top of the second cage, just let the growth hang down and grow back towards the balcony floor.

IF ONE PLANT PER CONTAINER: You could use the store cages as described above, or you have a couple of other options:

1) Go to the Tomato Forum here at Garden Web and read the past threads on Earthtainers. Some of them have photos of the various ways gardeners cage their plants.

2) You could buy a 50' roll of woven wire fencing. If you are going to have 7 plants, and you want cages with a diameter of 23", it would take approximately 6' of fencing per cage, so that would use up 42' of a 50' roll. If you want cages of 21" in diameter (and I'd prefer 23" diameter), you still will use about 5 and 1/2' per cage, so that would be about 38.5' of wire fencing used. I do think you can sometimes find wire fencing at home center stores in 25' rolls. Still, you'll need more than 25' if each plant gets its own cage.

3) You could use a mixed approach. The Husky Cherry plants would do fine in a store cage because they top out at 4 or 4 and 1/2 feet. That would leave 5 plants to cage, but at a minimum of 66" of fencing for a 21" diameter cage for those five plants, you'd still need 27.5' of fencing. So, any way you slice it, you'll need more than one 25' roll of fencing.

4) If you want to invest money in good cages that you can use for many years, check out the Texas Tomato Cages. They are very heavy duty. They also are very expensive, so you'd have to view them as a long-term investment. The fact that they fold for storage is a huge plus.

Dawn