(Homesteading.news) You may chuckle at the name – but “Stake-A-Cage” really is the best way to describe the trellis system we came up with a few years ago to effectively and inexpensively tie up our tomatoes and peppers. We get a lot of questions about it on the blog – so we thought today we would explain it in detail, along with details at the end of the post on how to make your own.

A few years back, with the garden planted, and about 45 tomato plants growing quicker than we imagined – we knew we needed to give them support and fast! After suffering sticker shock at the prices of tomato cages and stakes in the store, we decided to see what we could come up with ourselves.

We had some left-over welded wire fencing from building the outdoor run for the chicken coop, along with wooden stakes we had used to stake out the area where the coop and barn would go. So – in desperate need to tie up some tomato plants that were falling over – we used wire cutters to quickly cut the fencing into small grid panels. Next, we attached them to the wooden stakes with fencing nails we had on hand – and the Stake-A-Cage was born.

After we put a few up – we started realizing that we had something! Not only did they go together easily – they looked great and had a lot of advantages over the commercial cages or old wooden stakes we had used in the past.

For starters, it combines the best of the two old ways used to tie up tomatoes; the strength of strong wooden stake with the ease of a wire trellis cage.

Although stakes are strong in the soil – it’s always been hard to tie the vines to them as the plants grow larger throughout the season. And although cages provide a better support for the tomato plants – they become hard to pick through as the plants grow. Not to mention our cages always seemed grow right out of the ground and topple over as the season progressed.

Hence, the use of the Stake A Cage.

Read more at Hometalk.com.

More:

• Grow Bigger, Fatter, Better Tomatoes
• These Companion Plants In Your Garden Will REALLY Boost Your Tomato Crop
• How To Avoid The 7 Deadly Sins Of Growing Tomatoes

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