Cages to support tomatoes?

[singleseeder]

Whilst trawling utube, I often see that American growers have rolled wire mesh/netting around tomato plants, including the trusses.

Is this for support or protection? How difficult does this make it to harvest the tomatoes? Does anyone here use this method?

[Newton]

They tend to grow outdoors more because of their climate. I expect they work well for wind protection as well as truss support....God Bless Em

[taff]

it's for support, for bush and heirloom tomatoes

[Patchninja]

I don't think you need cages for any type of tomato. I grow outdoors and just use a stick or I have some metal spirals.

[Aberdeenplotter]

I found a pic on this site Tomato cages . Looks like his cages are very open so wouldn't make cropping difficult. Some rylock fencing wire with the largest mesh upwards would do the trick but that guys cages are 53 inches and rylock I think would be a metre high at most so might need to be suspended on stakes(the guys cages are supported with stakes as well). If I needed to support tomatoes using something that needed a couple of stakes to support, I'd just use the stakes to support the tomatoes as they seem to survive using that method.

[singleseeder]

Hmm, something else the Americans do differently then?

I quite liked the support idea of them, but some I had seen on video clips were much smaller mesh than the one Aberdeenplotter has pointed us to. If I come across any large guage netting being skipped, I might give this a try, just as an experiment.

Still no one here who has tried it then?

[susieq100]

I made a sort of tomato corral last year at the plot (much to the amusement of some of the 'old boys') and put 3 outdoor tomatoes (Oregon Spring) and 2 gherkins inside it. It worked really well - the toms are a semi bush variety anyway and it gave the gherkins something to cling on to. Acted as a wind break, support for the toms and I was able to put some polythene around it when the weather was unexpectedly chilly. But the diameter of my corral (it wasn't closed enough to be called a cage) was about a metre.

[Tadpole123]

I tried it on 2 plants years ago after finding the same as you on the web.
I put a stake in too just in case I needed it and I did. After weeks trying to remove armpits, took wire cutters to it and tied the plant to my stake.
The bush one was ok in it, kept it in its allotted space better but it annoyed me for some reason.
Yield was no better, and they don't look nice.

I also found some Americans growing them on their sides.......let the main stem grow along the ground and the arms grow upwards......that was a waste of time too.

The British way is best, well for me it is.

[King Carrot]

In North America they don't sideshoot as we do and grow indeterminates as a very, very large bush – I’ve seen photos of plants that are yards wide and tall! That's why some of them use cages among other types of support that we're not familiar with here.

I'm using some small cages for the first time on some dets - I've had big problems in the past keeping the trusses from bending at right angles and the bush from collapsing on the ground so I got some light gauge green fencing wire and made some cages. So far so good but things are starting to get a bit crowded, might make them a larger diameter next time.

[mcsee]

Does anyone here use this method?

I use them with great success. They don't hinder production in any way and are self supporting to a certain extent.

[Germinater]

Think the climate in the us has a lot to do with it most parts of the us have a long hot spring and summer .so most variatys that they grow will tent to grow a lot larger than any comparative plants that are grow in the uk with our very spontaneous weather systems ...the old saying of all the seasons in one day can be very true here even in the Hight of summer there weather is much more stable with would allow for much more growth to occur ...