To some degree, it depends on the type tomatoes you grow. If you are planting determinate tomatoes that ripen their entire crop at the same time, a smaller cage will suffice. Smaller is defined as 18 to 24 inches in diameter and four feet in height. I saw some cages like this in green wire at Lowe's this week for $6 each. Not a bad price. The wire was rather lightweight, but if you add a stake to them, they'd be fine. On the other hand, if you are growing indeterminate tomatoes which bear the entire season, you need something bigger and stronger. Again, 18 to 24 inches in diameter, but six to eight feet high is best for these (nice) monsters. If you are anywhere near the chance of hurricane force (or even tropical storm) winds in late summer, you will want one or two stout stakes with the big cages. I live inland 200 miles, but learned this lesson the hard way. The so-called tomato cages that Wal-Mart sells that are 8 to 10 inches in diameter and two to three feet high work extremely well for peppers and eggplants. I like 4 foot tomato type cages for cucumbers too. You have to help the plants get started in their climb, but it totally works. As far as beans, there are several ways to go. The old fashioned teepees are really nice looking. You need to be sure to use stout stakes to keep them from blowing over once they get full of vines. They are easy to pick too. Their disadvantage is the difficulty of weeding under them. This can be solved by putting a good thick mulch down under and around them at planting time. (be sure not to cover your seeds.) If you want to row crop, get some good stout 6 to 8 foot high stakes and place them about every six feet along your row. Then cover them with wire fencing. You can plant rows of beans on either side of the fence. Again, use mulch to control weeds between the rows.

Could you build a "crib" around it without shading the surrounding plants too much?? Even in my large garden, I sometimes build a little fence to gain a bit of control. At times, this is a single string on short posts to hold bush beans out of a pathway. Or, I will drive 4 posts close together so as to fit boards between them - creating a "retaining wall" to keep cucumbers from overrunning nearby ground. looking down (posts o, boards -, planting .): _o____________o_ ..o........................o Additional horizontal boards can be added just by dropping them in place if the posts are tall enuf and as the plants grow. Perhaps, you would only need to retain the plant on 1 or 2 sides. Steve PS always have trouble with my diagrams - GW doesn't like the space bar . . . . .

Your link to methods seems to be for commercial growers. I know when I did my row garden, I used to stake & cage the tomatoes spacing them 4ft each way. Each yr. toward the end of the season they would fall over due to the weight of all the fruit plus the high winds we get where I live. When beginning my 1st SFG I tried stakes but the soil was too soft to support them from the beginning. Last year using the SFG method I used Mel's suggestions from his book, modified to use what I had on hand. What I had were a bunch of 6ft. 1x1 tomato stakes I couldn't use in the soil. So I chose to screw them to the wood frame using 2 sheet rock screws with a 1x2 cross beams to support strings run down to each plant. I also used some 1x2's for uprights. Mel suggests twisting the plant around the string (wire or rope) each day or two. This is tedious but I was really surprised how well they held up even with the high winds we had last year. Esp. since my frames just sit on top of the ground, not anchored in any way. Towards the end of the season I got some 6ft. 2x2 from a friend which appeared to be 2x4's someone had cut down the middle and used in some sort of shipping crate. From that experience I learned that the 1x1 tomato stakes & the 1x2's tend to bow & warp. So this year I will try to make more 2x2's by either splitting 2x4's or screwing 1x2's together for uprights and use the 1x2's for cross beams. Mount the 1x2 cross piece so that the 2in part is perpendicular to the ground to lessen the warping, live & learn. On the 2x2's I drilled a hole for a carriage bolt (using a wing nut) using a sheet rock screw for the second screw. I was concerned that using 2 sheet rock screws they may snap off. However none did even on the tomato stakes so I may use 2 sheet rock screws this year since they are much less expensive. The below link shows both. In the first 2 pics I made a kind of goal post set-up adding another 4ft section to the top of a 6ft 2x2 in a manner where they could be folded up for storage. Upon completion I realized even if the tomatoes grew 10ft high, there is NO way I could reach them. So after they went over the cross piece I just let them grow back towards the ground. Problem solved. I grew 6 tomato plants in this frame along with 6 basil plants. The basil got crowded out but survived. The tomatoes did great, to my surprise. However, the tomatoes MUST be pruned. In my row garden days I NEVER pruned, that's why they needed 4ft minimum. But even with that I would grow a basil between each plant. The moral of the story is do NOT trellis any higher than you can reach. And using wood smaller than 2x2 is likely to warp. I found using wood, affordable, easy to build, and most of all, it worked. I found it easy to get around to harvest. Even with 4ft in the row garden it was difficult to get into the aisle to harvest. I had many more plants and still had room to plant more last year. If you have more money, you can use other materials. Hope this give you some ideas. Good Luck, whatever YOU choose. Gumby_CT Here is a link that might be useful: Gumby's Trellis Stakes.

missingtheobvious - no reason you couldn't glue the horizontal parts together. Whatever floats your boat! My storage situation is in a very low crawl space under the house. Only about 4 ft tall and access is through a small window which is about 1 foot by 3 feet. It's easier for me to break them down and store the uprights horizontally. I've put them back together so often that it only takes me about 30 seconds to assemble each horizontal bit. I pound the uprights into the ground 12 inches deep. Never had one blow down yet. Of course, no hurricanes here in SoCal either. But I did have an email from one guy who did have a tropical storm (a real one downgraded from a hurricane) come through. He had 3 different cages and my design fared the best. The cages are actually quite flexible, but sturdy. I'm not sure what you're asking about the UV-resistance of the pipe. Most of my pipes are over 20 years old and they're holding up well. A few of them don't fit quite as tight as most though. Could that be due to UV damage? I just slap some tape on them to thicken them just a tad.