Our Indestructible Tomato Cage

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Effective, inexpensive, and easy-to-make and store, tomato cages don't get better than this. JOEL PAPADICS

It was the best of the times. It was the worst of times. My success fed my failure. My tomato plants were wonderful, huge with lots of fruit — yes, botanically tomatoes are fruit — slowly ripening in the warm summer sun. I was failing because those tiny wire tomato cages I was using kept falling over, stressing and sometimes breaking the stems.

This was the situation by the end of the summer of '93. My tomato patch looked like a modern art sculpture — string, wire, wooden stakes — all intertwined with tomatoes. Anything to hold up those plants until harvest. I had to find something better by next summer, something inexpensive, lasting, easy to store and strong enough to hold my plants. As I thought about it, the scrounger in me took over.

Materials

Three 3'3" (or longer) pieces of white PVC pipe or cut a 10' piece into three equal pieces.

One 10' length of electrical conduit, cut into six 20" pieces.

Note: The dimensions can vary. They are designed so that only one of each type of pipe has to be purchased for each cage. If you're scrounging, any size will work.

Tools: Hack saw, electric drill or brace, 1/2" drill bit.

Construction

1) Cut the PVC and electrical conduit to length.

2) Hold or tape the three pieces of PVC together as shown in Figure A (see Image Gallery). Use a straight edge to mark the ends as shown. This ensures that the holes will be at the correct angle to each other for the cross pipes.

4) Repeat step 3, lining up all the Bs and then all the Cs. Make sure that you stagger each set of holes a little so that the cross pipes do not hit each other.

You're all set to put your cages together. Insert the cross pipes so that about 1/2 to 1 inch sticks out on each side. You may have to use a round file to enlarge the holes a little, but you want the cross pipes to fit tightly. Press the pipes into the soil about 8 inches. The watering hole allows me to apply water and fertilizer almost directly to the roots instead of wasting both with normal sprinkling. Weeds are better controlled by keeping the surface of the soil dry and with fewer readily-available nutrients. The low surface moisture also helps with fungal infections of the stems. I have a 5-gallon bucket with a small diameter plastic hose inserted at the bottom. This hose goes into the watering hole of the PVC support and my manure tea is delivered 8 inches below the surface. It's slow but effective. At the end of the season you merely take the cages apart and they easily store in a corner. No more pointed ends of wire cages to catch you unawares.