Every year we struggle to keep our tomato plants under control, so we came up with a DIY tomato cage. At the beginning of the year, our tomato cages work great but as the plants grow and begin bearing fruit they quickly begin leaning. We’ve tried staking each cage, but the plant ends up outgrowing the cages and laying all over the ground anyway which blocks our walkways and makes it really hard to harvest the tomatoes as they ripen.
Tomato Cages For Raised Beds
Commercial Tomato Cages vs. Our DIY Tomato Cage
What You Will Need For Your Tomato Cage
You could also run goat fencing along the 2×4’s and fasten your tomatoes to that as well.
How To Plant With These DIY Cages
We planted 3-4 tomato plants beneath the wire and used small sticks and garden ties or pieces of velcro to support the stock until they were tall enough to reach the wire.
We also removed the limbs close to the ground to encourage the plants to grow taller (it also helps to keep the plant more orderly Once they were tall enough to touch the wire we removed the sticks for the most part and secured the plant to the wires.
This year we are going to add support to prevent the 2x4s from pulling in, other than that we love this system! It held our tomatoes up off the ground and was strong enough to handle the heavy plants. We probably could have cut the 2x4s longer, but we weren’t expecting our tomato plants to get over 6 feet tall (a couple even went up and over our tomato cages and then up the top of our cattle panel arbors). All together we are really happy with this tomato arbor and plan to continue using them in our garden.
How To Make Tomato Cages From Wood
What you need:
2x4s 1- 5-6 foot section for either side of the box- (we use untreated wood to avoid the chemicals.)
17 gauge fence wire
Screws
Drill with the proper attachment.
Tape measure
Compound Miter Saw
Directions:
Cut the 2x4s to the desired height. Attach securely to your raised bed using screws (we chose to attach it in the center of most of our beds so we still have room to plant other things in them). Wrap the wire around the 2x4s tightly. You do not want it to sag as the plants get heavier. Make sure that the wire is snuggly wrapped around the 2×4. If you are going to use heavy-duty staples or notch the wood this is the time to do it.
More of our garden posts:
- How To Make Raised Beds
- Beginner’s Guide To Companion Planting
- Flowers To Plant In Your Garden That Repel Bugs
Check out our Amazon Storefront for all of the supplies you’ll need.
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