KMama:

They are not even close. The Tomato Tower is only 14" wide. I have the 18" wide ones and still have to prune. Get the 24" if you have the room.

Hmmm. East Bay huh ? I am in San Ramon area. Where are you ?

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

As you said, they cost about the same - including shipping (~$127/6 of the Towers, ~$132 for 6 of the Tx cages). Both are folding two piece design (a bottom and a top). I don't have any Towers, but I have seen them in other gardens before. They don't look as substantial to me as the Tx ones. Comparison:

Texas Cage - 6' tall (about 5' installed), 24" diameter. Or 18" diameter, if you prefer that size. Made from 1/4" diameter galvanized steel. They have longer legs, about 16" I think. The most I ever push them in is about a ft, which gives me a 5' cage. Very stable, even in my high winds.

Tower (extra tall) - 5'4" (64") tall (4.5' installed), 14.25" diameter. On the website, they say anchor in windy areas with our extra tall earth staples, which leads me to believe they may not be as stable. Made of 10 gauge (I think) galvanized steel which is about 1/8" diameter. They give the gauge on their smaller cages, but don't on the Extra Tall ones, so I am just guessing it is the same.

Seems like an easy choice between the two to me, especially since they are similarly priced.

I ordered the texas cages in 24 inches. Also in the bay area (marin) in the north so it gets warm as well

Spoke to the local seedling grower and they told me they usually plant their maters in late april so I am planning on doing the last week of april. The weather has been deceptive. So warm last week but chilly and rain this week. I didn't get any hail though.

I am also planting melons at the same time.

Hi Kristi:

I love the name by the way. I told myself years ago when/if I ever have a daughter, I want to be name Christy or Kristy.

I only grow tomatoes with the amount of yard we get in the Bay Area. But I will plant some Kale and dark leafy vegetables next winter.

I seedlings have been in for two weeks covered by wall-of-water. They are sulking so I am removing the wall-o-water and hopefully they will take off like some of the uncovered ones.

I am not sure what some of the vets here use. But I will go off this site, http://www.almanac.com/garden/plantingtable/index.php.

To protect the plants from wind after the cages are in, I buy clear trash can liners from costco. I think it's less than $10 for 500 of them. I clip them to the cage single layer with clothes line clips.

What's also cool what I did to protect them from rain was lay one cage on the shipping box, trace out the outline with permanent marker, cut out using box cutter (time consuming). When it rains, I just clip them to whatever level of the horizontal bar desire. Voila, instant umbrellas.