"Juliet" Grape tomatoes
Staking up and supporting tomato plants has got to be one of the more time-consuming pastimes of the home gardener, and there’s plenty of ways to do it. Circular cages, bamboo stakes, stacked hoops, special ties that won’t hurt the vines, you name it, the home stores will be glad to sell it to you.
If you have a garden and a library, you have all you need. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
In past seasons, I’ve used bamboo and wood stakes in the raised beds, and spent quite a bit of time tying the vines to the stakes. Last year, I tried my hand at cattle panels.
Cattle panels are basically farm fencing material made of heavy-gauge galvanized wire. I found some just laying around on our newly-purchased acreage, and put it it to use in the home garden as a vertical trellis. You can catch just a glimpse of it amidst all the tomato greenery below.
Tomato bed covered up against frost, Fall 2011
Using cattle panels as tomato trellis is not terribly clever or innovative. Just run a Google image search for “using cattle panels for tomatoes” and you’ll see plenty of examples, here and here.
Vertical trellising with cattle panels -- eezy-peezy
So using cattle panels for trellising is fairly common, and not that clever.
What is clever is rotating the panels ninety degrees to the horizontal, and growing the tomatoes through the panels. Again, not my idea. I saw this method year in what I think was Oklahoma Gardener magazine. I’d give more credit than this, but I can’t find a source on the interwebpipes.
Operation Tomato Support gets under way
The one tomato bed in the back yard had already six tomato plants (Husky Cherry, Lemon Boy, Better Boy, Golden Sunrise, and Juliet). Should have planned a little better, but the weather’s been nice, making for an impatient gardener (get those plant in the ground now!)
My neighbour asked if he could use my lawnmower and I told him of course he could, so long as he didn’t take it out of my garden. ~ Eric Morecambe
The slight trick was to get the vertical 4′ x 8′ panel, and flip it horizontal, without any other helping hands, and without hurting the new plants. Using some twine to suspend the panel from the support frame, I got ready the cross supports.
Cross braces are in
Once the cross braces are screwed in about two feet above the plants, the panel is secured with some zip ties.
nothing like zip ties
That’s panel number one, at two feet elevation. The next two will be put at four and six feet high, and should save some time, as the tomato vines grow up through the panel squares. To guide the plants up the panel, a couple of bamboo stakes per plant for support.
Cattle panels are readily available at farm & garden stores like Atwood’s and Tractor Supply, or from farm auctions. Or, you could do what I did, go the extreme expensive route and buy some acreage out in the country. There’s bound to be some cattle panels laying around somewhere.
We just used long, plastic dowels and zip ties last year and will likely do the same this year. Of course, the tomato portion of our garden is half the size of yours!
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Hi Michelle – growing those indeterminate grape and cherry varieties means that they’ll grow to the moon and back if you let them. That’s the reason for all the vertical stakes.
Great idea for the vertical panel use but this is something I cannot apply because my tomato portion is small and not in a defined area like your raised bed. Good stuff 101, love your gardening posts.
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Hi BTI – in your case, tall circular cages would probably work better. That’s what I have this year in the remote garden, again made out of heavy fencing wire. The vines come out the top and come back down in a waterfall effect. No staking and tying.
Hey that’s really cool, especially that you found some panels lying around that you were able to put to use. That must take a lot of time to get everything to stand up, but the fruits (or in this case vegetables unless tomatoes are considered to be fruits) of your labor will be worth it! -Sydney
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Hi Sidney, you should see all the stuff that I’m finding on that place. I have some old oak 2 x 6 and 2 x 8boards, still showing the rough saw mill marks. Heavy and solid, just begging to used for *something* cool.
That’s lot of fun work. I’m not gardener, but I am aspired to be one after reading your posts. Being vegetarian, I love to be around vegetables. Also, I have a dream of planting my own oranges, and making fresh juice daily from it. Love that quote as well.
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Hello Shilpan, I’m humbled that you’ve been inspired by anything on this site, let alone a post about staking tomatoes. Thanks.
If you’re living in a climate that allows citrus, than an orange or lemon trees should be a snap. Otherwise, you’d have to have dwarf plants in a container, and bring them in during the winter.
I love that you constructed that with what you had hanging around – that, according to my Dad is “what real gardeners do”
Our toms are 3″ high and mostly grown indoors – but then Scotland is not known for its great tomato season LOL – but I like the idea of an open trellis ………….. off to have a play
Elaine@mortgagefreeinthree.com recently posted..It’s such a Perfect Day
Hi Elaine – I guess I must be a cheap gardener.
I have a British gardener friend that maintains the reason there are mushy peas with fish and chips is that peas do very well in the cool climate.
What’s Cool is that you found the cattle stuff on yoru land already. So you reused it, didn’t have to pay for it, and it works! Great job, dude.
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Hi TB – Re-purposing is swell. I’d like to get my hands on a couple of 4′ x 16′ panels, so that I could get started on the hoop house. Must attend more country/farm auctions.
I really don’t have the patience to garden, so staking up and supporting tomato plants is certainly too much effort. I do admire the fact that you were able to adapt this idea from a magazine and use it to enhance your garden though.
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Hi Roshawn — it’s one of those things that sat in the back of the brain until it was time to act.
Nice Idea. I like how you set everything up and now it looks like you just sit back and wait (including an irrigation system). I’m a little jealous.
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Hi Corey — the drip irrigation really is a time saver. I’ll need to do a post on it soon enough.
This looks really cool. Since I use pots for my garden tomato cages seem to work best but I will definitely keep this in mind if I expand. Hopefully our gardens do as well as they have in the past. This year my seeds have been taking forever to sprout.
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love your garden ideas 101 – am hoping to get something planted this season so that I can enjoy veggies in the fall, but i’ve got a lot of interior work to do.
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Great idea, but won’t work for our Urban Garden as it’s too tall for the balcony. We’re trying some small cherry tomatoes, so hopefully they won’t get too tall.
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