I hate tomatoes cages. I used them in the past they limit the tomatoes trees from spreading its branches and producing more tomatoes. Beside it is a pain the A getting to the plant for care like fighting insects, fungus or fruit rotting. I am back to the good old tomatoes sticks and I can control it in any manner.

If you are going to be a frugal gardener, you will have to learn to scrounge. Anything can be used for something else. Got a free site in your area available thru the net? Eureka recycling hosts one here and if you are the early bird, you can find something useful for some project. I have many poles, metal, pvc, wood that I got over the last year. Tent poles from a discarded old canvas tent (they are more sturdy/thicker metal) will hold tomato plants if sunk in the ground and staked close together. Hay (straw) will work placed on the ground and if some fruit vines are there, it will keep them from rotting on the vine. That in addition to some type of teepeeing or tying like in the pics above. I put six plants along the edge of my tulip bed, 3 varieties, and I had gotten some 1" six foot tall stakes of hardwood, old, but still useful. I dug good sized holes and filled them with water and then hammered in the stakes. Then placed the plants in deep. I will mulch them and then place two pieces of those stakes across the top and tie rope from those to the plants. I should be able to make them climp whereever I want. I used discarded lattice pieces last year, nailed to a fence above my containers and just tied them as they grew. Also, I had a 4'x8' piece of lattice and I set it behind four plants and bent it over away from the plants and attached it to a fence. As they grew up and over the lattice supported the vines nicely. I use wire tomato cages but I drive a sturdy stake in the ground to support the cage and sometimes pieces of chicken wire wrapped around the cage and attached to that stake. Hope you work something out.

Thanks, Johnny... the width is something I hadn't considered. I'm planting with 2' spacing so I think I'm going to get the 18" Texas Cages. I don't mind a little pruning but won't do anything near what i did last year. I was doing SFG and really pruned... didn't work for me so well and my friend in Oakland who just threw some maters in a box of American Soil had 8 foot plants that just produced all season non stop. I'm in Walnut Creek and with our heat out here I expected better results than I had and I was totally jealous of my easy-going friends success and here I was all detailed with the SFG approach and it was a total failure. Are your seedlings in yet? Do you plant anything other than tomatoes? (I'm also struggling a bit with how and when to plant my other veggies like squash, beans, chard, and still leave room in the garden to transition to things like broccoli for fall, etc.) I can't seem to find any reliable date from the master gardener program about when to plant things. Do you go by frost dates? And did you get that crazy hail a couple days ago? We did here, and now I realize why the proverbial "they" tells us not to plant maters too early. thanks for your help! -kmama

Ok. In order for the arch to be higher, the tanks would need to be much closer together if you put them on the inside of the panel. They might be hard to get between, to weed, etc. So I would suggest you put them on the outside of the arch.(one on each side). I don't know if you considered that already as the option and pretty much have the tanks where you want them, but it looks like you wouldn't be able to weed the tank on the right, if it is right near the fencing. Have you put any drainage holes in the bottoms of these tanks? Don't put too many in. I was using about 9 food-grade stock tanks and put waaaay too many holes in them and the water would drain out much too soon, and I have to water them about every other day......which is a drag. I've tried to plug some of the holes and they're doing a big better. But mine are up on some cement blocks, and not right on the ground. I love trellis gardening. I grow (in the ground) cucumbers on both sides of the trellis and they love it. I also use my kids old swing set with fencing up one side and over it and grow winter squash, and it seems to love growing upwards.