A 10 foot length of 1/2 PVC pipe can be cut into thirds to use as stakes (or halved if you prefer a taller stake). It's inexpensive and a one time expense since PVC lasts forever.

Rodney

They absolutely need support. Agree with Dave the 3 ring cages are great. I got some last season for $1.50 each.

Make that three votes for those cheap "tomato cages". Too small for tomatoes, but just the right size for supporting peppers & eggplant.

Thanks for the replies... I guess please excuse my ignorance - but I have seen them before in stores (in the garden center).... they never seen to sell those small ones (unless I have a totally wrong picture in mind).

http://www.homedepot.com/s/Tomato%2520Cage?NCNI-5

https://www.menards.com/main/search.html?search=tomato+cage

Cheapest I'm finding is 3 bucks - am I missing something here?

$2.84 at Walmart but yeah you have to shop around the farm stores, nurseries, etc. or you can often find them as 50 cents each at yard and garage sales. You don't need the heavy duty or the powder-coated ones. Of course this time of year the demand is high for them so is the price. By mid-summer they are marked down quite a bit.

Dave

If you have an Aldi nearby, check there. I just picked up a few for 25 cents. They were originally 1.49, but have been marked down at my local Aldi.

Wow, I thought I got a good sale on the small tomato cages which I use for peppers. I think it was Aubuchon hardware that had the sale last year which I think was $1 each. I think you can get away without support depending on the variety of pepper. Shishito are small plants and small peppers. Usually bell peppers need support because the peppers can be big and heavy. I had a plant fall over one year because of weight and learned my lesson.

The ones I got for $1.50 were at tractor supply.

Keep in mind though the bettef the quaity, the more years you will have them. The ones I got weren't exactly high end.

I've had welds break on the bigger ones that are supposed to be sturdier. Some of my small cages are very old. I think you're right. We need to check the sturdiness f the wire. I've seen some square folding cages that are very flimsy looking.

Even though most smaller peppers don't *need* support per se, strong winds can do a number on them, so I will either use a sturdy stake on the main stem or a 3-ring tomato cage, as many mentioned above. I'll usually go for cages on yearlings, which are small enough to fit one over and stakes for overwintered plants that are already fairly large and bushy by the time I set them out.

Cages also have the benefit of offering a visual frame of reference for plant growth. :)

I've never grown eggplants, but would guess the same applies, perhaps even more so because of larger fruits.

I like the tallish versions of the cages. Pepper stems are ridged. If they grow too much taller than the height of the cages and have peppers towards the top, the cage acts as a fulcrum and the stem snaps right at the height of the cage with a strong wind.

Wasn't a problem when I lived up north, but here towards the south, peppers can grow a bit taller. I guess what I'm saying is be prepared to put a tall stake if you hadn't, and you get more growth than you expect.

I use the 3 ring "cages" for my Eggplants and Peppers, they work perfectly for them.

interesting point about wind and not the first time it has been mentioned. I don't think it gets very windy here in NH during the summer. Our property is in a slight depression and have a lot of trees that probably serve as wind breaks. Prevailing wind is from the west and there's a steep downhill from the garden area in that direction.

mystearica - how many plants are we talking about? If just a few then the cages even at $3 isn't much. But if you are planting 30+ plants then consider using Florida weave to support them. All that costs is a post every 6' or so and some good twine.

Or you can buy 1 cattle panel and a few T-posts, plant them down both sides and tie them to the panel.

Dave

Tomato cages ... and you can clip shade cloth to them for the first week or so.

@Dave - yeah I do have quite a few plants (see my crazy early posts).

@Aldi - I can't do a search on their site so I'll have to go look and see

@Tractor factory - the closest one that has the $2 cages are 1 hour + drive >___<

I'm considering either staking them with a bamboo (which I'm not sure if it's sturdy enough) or perhaps look into this Florida weave - wouldn't the twine dig through the plant's stem if it got windy?

Thanks!

I have 30 pepper plants planned ("picked" and "pickled" comes later) in a 6 ft by 6 ft bed and I am having similar questions about how to support them.

I am considering something like digdirt is suggesting (I think).... posts at all four corners and probably spaced every 2 to 3 feet, and cattle panel or CRW layed horizontally and zip tied/fastened to the posts at about 18 inches above the bed. Im considering that more for aesthetics than anything because its probably going to be close to just as expensive as buying the additional 15 or so tomato cages I would need if I went that route.

I used 4' hardwood stakes for mine last year, but I am putting the 6' stakes in this year for both my peppers and eggplant since they grew much higher than I thought last year and got toppled above the stake in strong wind. They ended up a good 6' above the garden bed. A little twine to the stake supported them fine. The stakes are about 1"x1"

"I am considering something like digdirt is suggesting (I think).... posts at all four corners and probably spaced every 2 to 3 feet, and cattle panel or CRW layed horizontally and zip tied/fastened to the posts at about 18 inches above the bed. "

Maybe I don't understand but I can't picture that working at all well and not what I suggested. Cattle panels are used vertically, not horizontally. 30 plants in a 6x6 bed is not only going to be very over-crowded but how could you access the center plants for harvesting, feeding, pest patrol etc.

Dave

If growing a lot of plants every year, you might consider buying a roll of metal fencing, cutting it into lengths, and rolling the pieces into cylindrical cages. The cost might look prohibitive at first, but you can cut a 4' or 5' piece of fencing in half for shorter cages, so you will get double the starting length.

You can often find used fencing much cheaper; I just looked on Craig's List locally, and found 5' tall fencing for $.50 per foot. Cutting that in half (to produce a 2' tall cage) brings that down to $.25 per foot, and $.75 worth (3') would give you a cage about 12" wide. When cutting the 4-5' height in half, you can leave exposed wire pegs which can be pushed into the ground as anchors.

mystearica
@Aldi - I can't do a search on their site so I'll have to go look and see.

Although primarily a grocery store, Aldi also has a selection of seasonal non-grocery items stocked each week. Since there is limited space in the store, often the older seasonal items are greatly discounted so they can be sold off and room is created for the newer items.

It appears that it's up to each individual store as to how this is handled, however. At one location, I found the cages marked down to 25 cents. Yet another location still has them at $1.49. I picked up several for 25 cents, although I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. I couldn't resist the low price.

That's a problem with that particular Aldi location. They do these crazy discounts to move stuff out and I find myself buying all sorts of things I don't really need.

But if you do decide to go look and you have multiple locations nearby, check them all if you can.

Dave - sorry if I misunderstood your suggestion. This is sort of what I was thinking, but instead of wood horizontally it would be crw or cattle panel. More stakes would be needed to help support the metal mesh.

Not my picture.

As far as overcrowding, It will be less than 1 plant per square foot which many people do. I foliar feed my peppers. And I can reach 3 ft into the bed from any side. I do admit it will be tight, but I have limited space and like to plant intensively.

cheers. I appreciate all the input and ideas.

mystearica: "I'm considering either staking them with a bamboo (which I'm not sure if it's sturdy enough) or perhaps look into this Florida weave - wouldn't the twine dig through the plant's stem if it got windy?"

Thousands of gardeners have used this technique for years...would they still be using it if it did not work? With simple staking there will be a need to add support strings/cloth to hold the plant to the stake...there will be rubbing against the plant in that situation, also. But, sure, given the right wind and situation anything is possible with any setup, be it string, rings, wood braces, etc.,. With a continuous rubbing of the string the plants sometimes build up a "callous" at those points to further protect themselves from the chaffing. I've seen the "Florida weave" used by lots of market growers.

I would think a bamboo stake 1" at the small end should be adequate to hold a pepper plant up provided the stake is embedded deeply into firm ground.

I wouldn't fool with the plastic plant clips you linked to...use some cotton scraps, strips of ladies' nylon stockings,...soft material that you could cut into 1/2" or so stirps. Jute string, the brown "grassy-looking string that usually comes in a small to large sized bulk roll, is probably the most often used...it is strong, cheap, and bio-degradable...for a small garden a roll will last a long time. $2.28 -> https://www.lowes.com/pd/Lehigh-1-16-in-x-190-ft-Natural-Twisted-Jute-Rope/3587908

Best wishes, Ed

Oh, and be sure whatever posts/stakes you acquire to anchor your plants to are long enough to be driven into the ground into firm soil...simply driving them into the tilled soil will probably result in them falling over...I'd want them 1-1/2' or so deep and at least 3' above ground. But, that's my opinion. ;) Ed

Every situation is different. For the 1600+ pepper plants and 500+ eggplants that I field planted last year I did as I always do and left out stakes. Plants typically do fine sucombing to more damage from my harvesting than any act of weather.

But for the peppers which I grow in a high tunnel (568 this year) I am using stakes between every 3rd plant in row with stringline weave and this year even going with 5 ft stakes since plants outgrew the 4 ft. stakes I used last year.

If your plants cannot support themselves then stakes are needed but often the support is a deterrent to harvesting and frost covering when needed. Not to mention the costs that everyone is debating.

I grow in the north and never support eggplants, rarely peppers. I have three small tomato cages which I use on the biggest peppers and the rest don't seem to need them. I would say that a wooden stake would suffice. Then again, if you live in the south with a longer growing season, they might grow much taller than mine ever get and would need some support.

BTW I read that peppers like company, and that a great way to grow them is two together, then the usual gap, then two together. It seems to work well for me, and I can grow more plants that way!

Linda

I can't speak for anyone else's gardens, but if I do not provide significant support for my peppers and eggplants, they almost certainly will be killed by a thunderstorm, or branches and/or the whole plant under the weight of heavy fruit load.

Ditto on the above. In my garden, nearly all of the plants with larger peppers will fall over (lodge) under load. For those with stout upright growth habit, storms will break off branches. Isolation caging (tents) helps somewhat, since the fabric blocks the wind... but even then, lodging is frequent without support.