Tomatoes & Peppers: best tomato cages?, 1 by dreaves

dreaves wrote:
We have vicious spring winds in central Texas. I wrap my cages in the thin, sticky plastic sold by U-Haul as "Mover's Wrap." That doesn't block the sun too much, but protects the small seedlings from being battered by the wind. The plastic only lasts one year, but I think it makes a difference. The photo below is from last year. This year, I'm only wrapping the plastic for the bottom 18" of the cage. The shorter height still protects the plants, but doesn't catch as much wind when we get really high winds. I don't stake each cage. Instead I drive a heavy T-Post on both ends of the row then string a heavy wire between posts, at the same height as the top of the cages. Each cage gets a couple of zip ties from the top wire to the wire between posts to provide stability. I'll take a picture later. I couldn't find any from previous years on my computer. Once the tomatoes are big enough to stand the wind, I trim the plastic off except the bottom 6 inches. I use that as a watering ring around the plant the same way Ozark uses the half 5-gallon buckets around his plants.

David