I remember back in the days when I was part of a community garden, we’d have a yearly cleanup every spring. Volunteers would turn the compost heap, spread wood chips, pull weeds, that sort of thing. The worst job, by far, was organizing the shed, because it was absolutely chock full of tomato cages.
Tomato cages are the worst part of growing tomatoes. They get rusty. They get bent. They never stacked well to begin with, but have you ever tried to fit one slightly misshapen tomato cage into another? I'm sure you have, and I'm sure it wasn't fun.
Storing them for winter in a shed? Especially a little shed like this one from Home Depot? My garden’s shed was huge, and had a whole second floor devoted to the mangled, barbed wiry mess that was over 100 gardeners’ worth of tomato cages put away for the season.
You were much better off pulling weeds.
Snap-Together Tomato Cages
An eggplant seedling in my own garden
I have my own garden now, and my own shed, and I’ll be darned if I’m going to spend a day every spring wrestling tomato cages.
The first time I planted tomatoes in my garden, I went looking for a better solution, and I found these incredible modular tomato cages on Amazon. I bought one 4 pack, then loved it so much (and had so many plants) I went right back and bought a second 4 pack. But you could just save yourself the trouble and buy an 8 pack.
I promise these are actually what I use in my own garden. The ones I bought are from Halatool, but you can also get them from Legigo, Sidefusi, Gardzen… I'm sure they're just as good. The only important thing is that they break down into pieces.
How Do They Work?
A tomatillo in my garden trying to escape
I store my tomato cages in a plastic shopping bag, tucked away into the corner of my shed. When spring comes, I dig them out and start assembling. There are three parts to these tomato cages – long pole segments, little tubes to connect them, and plastic arms with a hook on either end. And with those materials, you essentially have a garden Erector Set. Any number of poles can be linked together to achieve any height. Any number of arms can hook onto the poles anywhere along their length.
You can build a three sided cage, or a four sided one. I’ve built a little wall to support a row of sweet corn that I thought might blow over in a storm. I once built a series of tiny shelves to prop up an errant summer squash plant that took off out of its bed.
They’re also adjustable! Have you found yourself trying, eeeever so carefully, to bend the branch of a tomato plant so it fits back inside its wire cage? It rarely ends well. With these things, all you have to do is unsnap one of the arms, swing it out, manhandle your tomato into place, and snap it back in. No bending (and inevitable breaking) required!
Have you ever misjudged the size of your tomato plant? They’re so small as seedlings, it’s hard to imagine them needing a big giant cage. So you choose the smaller one. And your tomato plant grows. And keeps growing. And by July it’s spilling over the top of the cage and taking it down with it. With one of these modular cages, you can just add on to the top, and keep on adding. You can even add buttresses if the whole thing starts getting unwieldy. Gravity might catch up to you eventually, but it’ll probably be time for a frost by then, anyway.
Go Get Your Own
Tomatoes in my garden - I've attached the arms at just the right height to support each plant
Once fall comes, these tomato cages break apart beautifully. No tightly wound vines are a match for them. Just snap it apart and let the dead plants fall away. Then gather up your pieces and tuck them away. I keep mine in an old shopping bag, but I bet they'd fit perfectly in something like this sports duffel from Amazon. Hide your bag somewhere in the back of your shed or a corner of your basement, and never think about it again until spring.
You'll be so glad you did.
