DIY Tomato cages

This year we decided to not tie up our tomato plants like we have for the past 8 years....we're doing tomato cages. Eek! I' m hoping that things will work out because we put a tad bit of effort into making them. Adam had to remove the wood slats that he had attached to the top of our tomato garden before we could do anything else. We are seriously hoping we made the right decision.

Now....if we were going to try cages were going to do it properly. None of that flimsy tomato cage stuff for us. I wanted nice sturdy cages that would hold the 8 foot plants that we normally grow. I'm thinking they won't be reaching those heights since the cages are only 5 feet. *sigh*

We started off with the concrete reinforcement wire that you see above. They are nice and rusty when you buy them so be prepared. We also purchased some snippers to cut through the stuff.

Yes, I realize that I forgot to take the tag off of the clippers before we took this picture. (I finally cut the thing off after cutting the wire for 5 cages.) I'm not the strongest person in the world so cutting the cages took a bit of effort on my part. I believe the wire is 5 feet high and I cut enough for 13 cages.
For the tomato cages in the garden I counted 12 squares and then cut in the middle of the 13th square. For the cages that are in the whisky barrels, I counted 10 squares and then cut the 11th.
Oh, I also cut the top edge off so that the wire is exposed on one end. That is the part that you shove into the ground.

Adam had the fun job of bending the wire of the cut edges over each other. This creates the circle and hold the cage together. Lots of fun on the hands. =)

This is what they look like when they are done. We should be able to use these for several years. The only bad thing is the fact that they don't stack like the store bought cages. I think we will need to just leave them in the beds each year. The cages are perfect to hold the groundcloth in place. We also cut the leftover edge pieces into little sections so that Adam could bend them in half. We used those as "staples" to hold down other areas of the groundcloth. Much cheaper than buying the ones from the store. He also arched a few so that they would fit over our soaker hoses. I'm hoping that we can install a drip line next year. =)

This is the finished product. We have 8 plants in the garden. I'll try to post pics of the 5 plants on our deck soon.