My Southern California Vegetable Garden: Texas Tomato Cages

I bought a new set of Tomato Cages from Texas Tomato Cages.

In the past, I have used 54" Tomato Cages that I bought at my local Home Depot.

Unfortunately, my Cherry Tomatos plants grow very tall and easily outgrow the Cages in a few months.

Since I have a retaining wall behind my raised bed and my neighboor has tall trees behind the wall, the Cherry Tomato plants only get light from one direction. This causes the plants to grow in one direction (toward the sun).

Last Year, I had to jury-rig supports to keep the plants from toppling over. You can see the plants tilting toward the sun in the picture above.

Eventually, the whole thing can tumbling down in August and I had to prematurely end my tomato growing season.

I looked around at various places and settled on the Texas Tomato Cages.

There were 3 primary reasons for choosing these Tomato Cages.

First, the Tomato Cages were sturdy, made from 1/4 inch steel. This way they would be strong enough to avoid being toppled over.

Second, the Cages came in a diameter of 24", big enough to allow my Cherry Tomato plants to grow without excessive pruning.

Finally, and most importantly, I could buy extensions that would make the Tomato Cages 8 feet tall. My Home Depot cages topped off at 54".

The Texas Tomato Cages came in 2 large boxes. One box contained 6 tomato cages (each 6' tall) and the other box contained 6 extensions (each 2' tall). One next thing about the these Tomato Cages is that they fold flat for easy storage (and shipping).

The picture to the right shows the Texas Tomato Cage compared to my old Home Depot Tomato Cage. It is a little hard too see, but the Home Depot is about halfway down the Texas Tomato Cage and coned shaped. You can see that the top of the Home Depot Tomato Cage is bent. This was a result of the damage down when the Cherry Tomato plants toppled over.

The picture below shows the Texas Tomato Cages in the Raised Bed.