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

I just stick the bottom half of the cage into the ground as deep as it will go and don't even put the second part on until the plant is tall enough to require me to do so. At that point, the cage is in the ground, doesn't move, and then I just slide the extension on. Goes easy enough. TIP: I've found that alternating the hinge direction (the direction which they collapse down) between the top and bottom half makes it so that the cage as a whole is much more rigid. Doing it this way, the cage cannot collapse or lean to one side or the other - no extra reinforcement will be needed. They only fold flat in one direction, so if you alternate the top and bottom haves and slip them together, it can't collapse, period. I've grown 10 ft. plants loaded with tomatoes in these cages with no extra support... with high winds and lots of rain... never had a problem.

Tanager Song Farm used to sell a variety called Texas Pink, although I no longer see it listed on her site. The description was: "This large pink tomato has a nice meaty rich flavor, but very few seeds." In addition, it is listed in the '07 Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook as a pink beefsteak. Texas Kansas Marketer is listed in the yearbook as a regular leaf, 6-10 oz red. No mention of whether it is pointy or not. There is also a variety called Texas Wild, but it's a cherry type, so probably not the one you had in mind. Where did you purchase the plant? Maybe that will give someone reading some ideas to help you narrow it down. Also, some pointy fruits or "hearts" can occasionally be caused by environmental influences, but if you've already got a bunch of fruit set on the plants, and they are *all* pointy, never mind. ;-)

gardenzone4, like natal says I never had to extra stake a Texas ever. The long legs anchor well. I got the 24" because I never prune and grow monster size plants. I definitely have to stake my CRW cages though or they will blow over once full of heavy fruit. I space my Texas 4 to 5 feet apart and still the plants grow into each other by August. I have grown at least 100 plants in Texas cages and only once when I had a sickly, wispy, runt of plant did it ever collapse upon itself but it would have been the same had it been in a CRW cage. If you grow tall bushy plants it's not an issue. I construct my Texas fully at transplant time but you could just place the top piece on later if you like. Until the plants reach the 6' top of the cage I will walk by every other day and guide a few branches "up" to the next ring so they stay inside growing upwards and not outwards. Once they grow taller than the 6' top I stop that of course and then they start growing back down. Here's a pic of Texas in action: Notice the two tallest plants in the center. They are monster "Claude Brown NOT Yellow Giant" plants. One is about 7 feet tall and the other about 8. This pic was taken in July. They got even bigger as the season went on and like I said will grow back down again.