Need Suggestions for Supporting Tomato Plants

[lesa]

I use the cattle panels, as well. I tried every thing imaginable- and these work great. We get them at tractor supply for 23 bucks or so. I've been buying one or two a season. They will last forever, and they are easy to stack. I do tie the plants up. I have my whole row of tomatoes with panels now, and I couldn't be happier!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I Googled it again after Lesa's post and found a 16' x 52" cattle panel for $19. That's more like it.

 

[Collector]

OG, I used the cone shaped cages again this year. I have grown my biggest tomatos ever and the darn cages could not handle it they fell over and I had to stake them up. Sounds like I may have to check out the cattle panels. Specially if I am going to keep growing these huge for me tomato plants!

 

[OldGuy43]

Please read my O.P. I'm only planning on about 4 plants. A 16' panel will probably be a bit more than I need.

 

[AdamBorzy]

Take a look at this...

 

[Smiles Jr.]

If you're only going to have 4 to 6 plants I wouldn't bother with any of the metal cages, cattle panels (to me these are extremely expensive) and simply use 6 ft. wooden, or re-bar, or angle iron, or iron pipe, or PVC pipe, or anything long and straight. All year 'round I keep a sharp eye for things to stack on my tomato stake pile in the barn. Pound them into the ground about 12 to 18 inches BEFORE you set out your plants. Each spring I go to the Goodwill store and buy two bed sheets (usually $2 to $3) and cut them into 1" wide strips and as long as the original sheet length. As the tomato plants grow I tie them to the stakes with the sheet strips. I cut off the strips near each knot and move on to the next plant and repeat. This has worked very well for me for many years. At the end of the growing season I cut all of the ties and toss them into the compost along with the tomato plants. Watch for seeds though.

 

[Southern Gardener]

I Googled it again after Lesa's post and found a 16' x 52" cattle panel for $19. That's more like it.

$19 I can handle! I'll be buying them in the spring.

I've tried tomato cages, wooden stakes and t-post - none of them worked. I had rotting tomatoes on the ground and plants that snapped and died.

Smiles - I like your idea on using the bed sheets for ties. I'll have to do that next year as well.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Please read my O.P. I'm only planning on about 4 plants. A 16' panel will probably be a bit more than I need.

There are plenty of ways to do it, not just with cattle panels. I'm just throwing an idea out there for you to think about.

With a 16' cattle panel and a set of bolt cutters you can soon have two 8' cattle panels. Go out and measure how far apart your tomato plants are. An 8' cattle panel on each side of the row may be about right.

Your plants are maybe 24" apart? That's what I use. I'm sure other people use different spacing. With four plants in a row, you have plant-2'-plant-2'-plant-2'-plant. That's 6'. Leave about a 1' space at each end of your 6' of row for the plants to spread out and 8' is reasonable.

I did read your O.P. And I did previously mention bolt cutters.

 

[so lucky]

Coming into this thread late, but I just wanted to mention that IF you have the larger cone shape tomato cages, and IF you grow determinate tomatoes, you can have good results by running a stake down between the circles of each cone on two sides. Do this before the tomatoes are planted, or immediately after. The wooden stakes wedge the cones in and anchor them to the ground. Of course, you need to drive the stakes into the ground a good 8" or so. This is just using the stuff you may already have on hand.

 

[schmije]

Like Collector, we've had problems with cages falling over. We came up with a simple solution, and for the past 3 years, we've used it with NO cages falling over. Our cages are short sections of wire fence bent into circular cages, but regular tomato cages will work the same way.

We hammer a T-post into the ground at the end of each row and every 3 or 4 plants along the row. Then we tie a rope at the top of the T-post, stretch it across the tops of the cages, and attach the rope to the top of the cages with cable ties.

The plants are pretty overgrown, but hopefully you can see what we've done. Our plants are spaced 3' apart, and the rows are 5' apart. As you can see, most of the plants are growing out of the tops of the cages, but none of them are falling over, because of the rope at the top. The T-post on the right is the end of a row, so we angled it out. You can see another T-post by the red shovel.

This was supposed to be a pic of our squash, but Zeus insisted on helping. You can see the tomatoes in the background.

You can see how overgrown everything is. The two rows on the right are almost touching, but none of the cages are even leaning.

It's important to install the cages, T-posts and rope when you plant the tomatoes, because it becomes difficult to do it once the plants have grown even a little bit. I like this method, because we no longer have to constantly tie them up with strips of old bed sheets or tee shirts as others have mentioned in this post. All we have to do is walk the aisles a couple of times a week and poke the plants back into the cages when they begin to escape.