A Quick & Easy Hack for Using Tomato Cages
I’ve never been a huge fan of tomato cages, mainly because my tomatoes outgrow them by mid-June. Tomato plants want to grow tall and they need the support to do it. If you let them, they’ll grow as tall as your house, but they are basically limited to whatever structural support you provide them. If however, all you have on hand is tomato cages, that’s okay. Today I’m going to show you a quick and easy hack to get the most out of your tomato cages.
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Why Do I Use Tomato Cages?
When we moved into our current home, there was a whole stack of cages in the backyard. I figured it would be better to use what I have on hand first and save some money before going out and buying new supplies for garden infrastructure. That’s really the only reason.
In Defense of Tomato Cages…
I’m not trying to put anyone down for using tomato cages. For what it’s worth, they are easy to use, provide great support for tomatoes, at least in their first couple months of growth, and may be ideal for gardeners with small backyard variety gardens who don’t necessarily want 10-foot tall tomato plants.
But I’m more of the “go big or go home” type, so I want my tomato plants to be has huge as possible. And that’s why I came up with this hack.
A Hack For Tomato Cages
This hack is super simple and will easily double the support height for your tomatoes. All you need is a couple extra cages and some zip ties.
To beef up your cages, simply take an additional tomato cage, flip it upside down, and zip-tie it to the top of the original cage.
Repeat this step for all your tomato plants, and then as an added measure of strength, you can even zip-tie the adjacent cages together so they can better support the weight of the growing tomatoes.
I came up with this trick last year and it worked out great! My tomatoes were 8-feet tall by mid-summer and we harvested more tomatoes than we knew what to do with.
Safety Recommendation:
As a safety measure, I recommend taping the pointy ends of the top cages with white or bright colored duct tape so they are easily noticeable. When your tomatoes start growing out, it can be tricky to spot the sharp ends. This could be dangerous if you’re leaning in trying to pick tomatoes.
You could also cap them with old tennis balls or pieces of foam such as pool noodles. Just an idea!
Conclusion
That’s basically it for this article, a quick and easy hack for making the most of your tomato cages. Hopefully this helped inspire you to get a little creative in your garden and I hope your tomato harvest is bountiful!
If you have any questions or comments about tomato cages, or if you have your own creative way to support your tomato plants, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Make sure to leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.
Happy Gardening!
Cody
Thistle Downs Farm