A tomato cage idea

[bearfan454]

Every year I buy the tomato cages and they get all bent up and I end up throwing them away. This gardener at work Marshall, told me something I'm going to try. You get the concrete reinforcement wire. Cut it into 6 foot sections, and twist where you cut it to attach it to the other side. It make a nice circular tomato cage. It rusts and that puts iron into the soil. You can unhook them and save them for next year too.

[dcfirefighter]

1. I use the concrete reinforcement wire

a friend and I split a 6 (10?) pack of 4x8 6" welded wire

I put mine on end, suspended from a bar across two 8' 2x2" pieces of lumber, for tall vining things like peas & beans & cukes

or bend them in half, for lower vining things, I'm going to try melons like this.

As for tomatoes, I'm trying a factory built frame this year, though, if it happened to fit my garden, I would have used the welded wire as such: bend 2 pieces, each in half long ways. Stand them back to back, so that it makes a tall structure with an 'X' shaped cross section. Plant one tomato plant in each pair of open arms.

[OnionPatch]

2. My good friend uses that method

every year and she loves it. And she's a master gardener! :) She says the cages you buy in the store are too small and get bent up but these home-made cages are bigger and stronger.

[HerbieHeadhunter]

3. That is what I have used for 5+ years....

and they work amazingly well. I slip bamboo canes throw the grid to support branches of the plants as it grows, and eventually the plant will support itself in the gage. The thing to do is to securely anchor the cages to the ground because when the plants are large they can catch the wind and blow over (the cages are six feet tall and the tomato plants will grow to 6-9 feet tall, so it acts like a sail) the cage easily. I staked the cages down and put concrete blocks along the bottom to keep them from being blown over in storms.

With a couple of them I went ahead and split the rings down the middle to make long, curved half-tunnels which I lay in my garden bends for cucumbers and squash to vine on, which keeps them off the ground and lets air circulate underneath them.

Be very careful when you are making the rings, however. The wire is tightly wound and you can very easily stab the hell out of yourself while you are unrolling it. Get somebody to help you and use a strong pair of cutters.

[Kolesar]

4. I pound a pipe into the soil next to the cage and zip-tie it to the cage

So at least the cage stays standing up. I think your solution addresses the-bending-of-the-cage, which is a different problem.

[NMDemDist2]

5. I saw a cool idea on HGTV this weekend of building teepees

with sticks and wire. the sticks were just things from the trees the size of your thumb and they tied them together with wire to hold them together as a triangle with two or three cross pieces up the sides

i'll go look for a link......

edit to add, here's the link but the video barely shows the teepee and it says nothing about it at all, :cry:

http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/gl_design_other/article/0,1785,HGTV_3566_2260646,00.html

try and catch a re-run is all i can suggest...

[dweller]

6. if you vary the sizes slightly

they will store inside each other in the off season, rolled.

dp

[morningglory]

7. Clever, Dweller! Thanks! Those tomato cages blow down and bend the

bottom wires. They are a pain when they get weighted down with heavy foliage.