There are many creative ways for making DIY tomato cages for staking tomatoes using simple materials on hand. Some folks with lots of gardening space let their tomatoes sprawl out without staking, but that does leave your fruit more vulnerable to pests.

Most people prefer to stake tomatoes in some fashion to support them growing vertically. There are many option and pros and cons to each, but most work about equally.

We dedicate a lot of growing space to tomatoes in the GardensAll gardens. We’ve grown tomatoes in straw bales, grow bags, self watering tubs, cinder blocks, rows and raised beds.

Okay, so we got a little carried away. Tomato fever came over us. Subsequently, we’ve also used a variety of DIY tomato cages for staking our tomatoes. We’ve trellised, tied and caged, using wire, wood and bamboo, and that’s some of what we’re sharing here.

If you don’t have time to make your own tomato cages, you can buy them. We’ve had success with purchased tomato cages, but some of them are too flimsy, so be sure to get some of the sturdier tomato cages.  

The simplest are the sturdiest store-bought tomato cages, however, they can be expensive if you need a number of them, plus they do require more storage space, post season. However, there are also other uses for tomato cages.

Ideally, you’d want to visit your local home store to gauge the sturdiness of the cage before you buy it. If you’d rather order online, these on Amazon appear to be sturdy, but if you go this route, just check the reviews before ordering.

Wire Tomato Trellis

For the main garden, we’ve set up a wire trellis system with 5 runs of wires about 10 inches apart, using T posts and 1 inch conduit pipe as a top structural feature. This seems to work well so far.

One of our “Hillbilly” tomatoes (wouldn’t you know) has overgrown the support, so we are adding height with a stout bamboo pole lashed to the wires.

Speaking of bamboo, we use it for so many things in the garden and yard, let’s take a quick detour into it.

Black Bamboo

We have a patch of assorted bamboo, including black bamboo. We’ve found bamboo to come in handy for many things over the years, so recommend growing some. We like the black bamboo for the exotic feature it adds to the landscape. But…

Clumping Bamboo

Just remember to get the “clumping bamboo” because it doesn’t take over your land… unless you have an area where you’d like it to spread in. There are so many beautiful varieties to choose from and add visual interest to your landscape in addition to cutting and using the bamboo stalks in endless ways.

Bamboo Uses – what we’re using it for:

The straw bale “block” garden has wire (cattle) panels at the top and bottom ends supported by T-posts. It seemed such a waste to plant only two tomato plants per bale so we put in a third one in the middle. That left us with an issue of how to support that middle row.

Our solution was to span over the bales with bamboo poles. They are paired together, one on each side of the plant and fastened to each other and the wire grid with rubber bands. You can also use plastic or twist ties, garden tape or plant clips, any of which are easy to apply and remove.

As the plants grow, we keep adding cross members. We’re thinking these will brace the plants without having to tie them to any support.

Our third method is tying off to the wire panels. Because the lower edge of the panels are raised to straw bale height, we have some 48 inches of vertical room to grow.

Creative Tomato Cages

Some tomato plants can grow quite tall and will need good vertical support.

Here are four cool tomato cages you can make. These range from a wooden cage that will add a beautiful vertical accent to your garden to the all practical cattle panel cage using live stock fencing.

Build Folding Wood Tomato Cages

Article excerpt and photo by John “Woody” Woodzick on Mother Earth News

Materials List

• Six 1-by-3-inch wooden strips measuring 8 feet long
• One 2-by-4-inch piece of scrap board measuring 8 inches long, for the top section that will serve as the pivot point where the two “ladders” hinge
• Two 3-inch deck screws
• About 30 1 1/2-inch galvanized deck screws

For the complete instructions go visit this article on Mother Earth News.^[1]https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/diy-tomato-cages.aspx

Cattle Panel Tomato Cages

What’s great about this idea is it provides a shortcut to a cage system that can support 6-12 tomato plants, and save lots of time over making 6-12 individual cages, or the expense of buying them. Learn how in just over 4 minutes, then go build your own!

Next up: how to build heavy duty tomato and vegetable cage.

Reinforced Wire Tomato Cage

Tomato cage out of cement reinforcement wire. These can be used for any climbing veggie or even if open flat as a trellis.

Learn how to make your own in just 8 minutes.

Next, how to make two variations of PVC pipe tomato cages.

PVC Pipe Tomato Cages

So… what kind of tomato cage are you using or building? Come on over to the Gardens All Facebook page and join the conversation… post your pictures. We enjoy the company!

Contributions from the Community

Deb Duvall – “Fence Posts and Twine”

I use electric fence stakes. Usually three per plant. Had them for years and they hold up well. As the tomatoes grow I add twine around the stakes to form a basket or sides. I put loops on the ends of the twine and use the stake’s built in wire catches and hook the twine. This way the twine is also reusable for several years.

Check out this article for more on how to grow tomatoes.

Wishing you great gardens and happy harvests!