Quick DIY for gardeners: Tomato cages

Hi fellow DIY enthusiasts / gardeners,

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Today's post is a bit of a quick one but it was still fun and I believe helpful. I recently shared our garden project here but it was lacking some important hardware, particularly for tomatoes: cages!

If you've ever grown tomatoes, you know that the plants generally need quite a bit of support like any other vegetable/fruit plant that doesn't end up being a tree. The plants branches get heavy with their delicious treats and can't stand up on their own so many use cages to assist them in staying upright.

image source

One thing I didn't realize until I went to my local hardware store is that the metal cages I was thinking of using were actually poisonous for our health! The poison comes from the galvanize coating they put on the metal to prevent it from rusting. I get the need for it but I don't want that stuff washing off into my plants and then into my dinner plate! I decided to take matters into my own hands, with a 10 minute fun little DIY that can be done with multiple different materials.

DIY wood frame

One thing I wasn't able to do this time was gather some decent sticks. We've been having a tough time with ticks in our area and I didn't want to venture into the woods to then collect a handful of ticks crawling on me; I have a friend with Lyme disease so I didn't want to risk that at the moment! I ended up grabbing some small wooden posts from a local hardware store as an interim solution to see how they fare for the season; if they do poorly then I will go the stick route next year!

Supplies/Tools
There were just a few simple, very cheap supplies needed for this project!

I bought 10 of these 48" wooden posts to help support the plants:

I also have a big bag of zip ties, which were something I needed to use since I doubted that twine would be able to withstand the weather for the many months this summer

I also just used a basic pair of pliers that I could find to cut the wood, these were the only ones I could find easily in our house.

Steps

I first needed to cut the sticks I bought. I measured roughly how wide they would need to be and made several pieces out of one of them.

I then inserted 3 of the full length ones into the potted plants and used the ones I cut to go between two of them so when the tomato plants grow higher, I can guide them to grow within the area. I used the zip ties to connect the horizontal sticks with the vertical ones.

I put the zip ties at a crisscross angle so they would support both of the sticks; the tomato plants get pretty heavy when they're loaded with delicious tomatoes!

I repeated this on the other big tomato plant and had some pretty solid support for them!

The smaller ones I am going to try to put one single vertical stick and zip tie them to the stick to see if that works any better.

How's your garden doing? Let me know what you've got going on!

Check out my other DIY posts if you'd like!
Securely Hanging a Cabinet ;

Joint Compound on Ceiling ; Washing Machine Drain Pump ; Bubble wrap insulation on a wall ; Finish work in the bathroom ; Bubble wrap on windows ; Laminate floors in a bathroom ; Ball joints on a car

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