Tomato towers

Now that the tomatoes are in the ground and doing well, it's time for phase 2 of the tomato project: support. The last couple of years that I have had a garden here, the tomatoes have been very successful, and huge, as in overtaking the bed in which they were planted. We talked about "the tomato forest", and when you went to pick tomatoes it was going "tomato diving". I had some home-made cages that Dan made for me when we were in Oregon, but I decided not to move them to the desert. This proved to be a mistake because the store-bought ones were plainly inadequate. Too flimsy, as well as too short.

Dan had promised to make new cages and it was time to make good on the promise. This is proving to be an all-out, last-and-final, forever, tomato cage project. The cages are welded out of rebar and are sporting chicken-wire around the bottom to keep the birds from picking at the plants when they are young.


Here is Dan welding, off the shop/shed porch. Welding makes a mess, and he wants the porch to stay pretty.

And the result, installed on 4 of the 12 plants. If this is a typical growing year, the plants will be growing out of the top and sides of these towers.