How We Build Tomato Cages

 Tomatoes come in two different types of varieties: determinate and indeterminate. Determinate varieties grow to a certain predetermined height and set all of their fruit in a short window. Indeterminate tomatoes are considered vining plants and they will continue to grow up and out throughout the growing season as they produce tomatoes more gradually. The varieties of paste tomatoes that we grow are all indeterminate, and as such they need sturdy cages to support their height and vigor. The types of cages you can buy at most home and garden stores, in addition to being expensive, typically don’t provide adequate support for larger plants, so we decided to make our own.

I’d read about people using extremely heavy duty cattle panels to make their own tomato cages, but they’re quite expensive and we needed 36 of them for paste tomatoes alone, not to mention all the other plants in our garden that require support. We happened to have some 4′ welded wire goat fence leftover from a previous project, so last year we decided to make some cages using it and see how they stood up to our tomatoes. They were perfect. A few of them even got left out in the garden over the winter by mistake and there is no rust or deterioration. We expect these to last us easily 5-10 years or more at a cost of about $3/cage.

Since we increased our garden size by 50% this year, we needed to make another batch, so I filmed Bill demonstrating how he does it. I’m not the usual camera operator, so apologies in advance for the quality. We hope you enjoy this tutorial. Drop a comment below or find us on social media and we’ll be happy to answer any questions!