Heavy duty tomato cages

Jun 18, 2008 12 Replies

I need tomato cages for the garden. I have tried the wimpy wire baskets at the local farm store and they get bent up, fall over and are a waste of money. I did find some nice heavy duty ones in the local Amish community but they are $18.00 each!



I tried some hog panels one year but that was a mess too because you could not weed around them and it just did not work out.



So I have these hog panels and if I could bend them in a circle and weld them, they would be nice and sturdy but how to bend them. They are tough. Thinking about this, sitting in the shop last night, I spotted the backhoe.....



The 4 in 1 bucket made a fine press brake! I welded them together and now have manly tomato cages.



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Bob


Those make my 14 gauge wire fence cages (4ft tall) look pretty wimpy :)

I would still pound in a good steel fence post and wire the cage to it. Some guys put in two posts, but I haven't had any problems yet using just one. Works good with the regular (not the really wimpy) tomato cages too.

If I could afford that loader maybe I could pony up for some hog panels too. They aren't exactly cheap if you get them new...

-snip-

I didn't have a bucket or the hog panels, so I had to make do with the

5' high concrete re-wire with 6" mesh.

Jim

I want a break like that! Portable - self propelled even!

Richard

Those are the ones we use - big enough holes to get your hands into and pick the inside. If you like, you can weld some rebar on the bottom for "staking" them into the ground.

That's what mine are made out of too. I've used the reinforcing wire cages for over 10 years. Rusty, but holding up well. The deer bent one or two, but they're all still in pretty good shape.

RWL

replying to bob_1fs, Billy1202 wrote: I just took 1/8" bare rod and bent it until it met and tacked it. Then ran 4 poles quarterly (3,6,9,and 12 o'clock) similar to store bought cages. I started with 5' lengths which is a much smaller circle than you expect. I was able to build a 7' tall cage for 34 dollars, excluding welding supply (couple of rods?) hope this helps.

replying to bob_1fs, Billy1202 wrote: I just took 1/8" bare rod and bent it until it met and tacked it. Then ran 4 poles quarterly (3,6,9,and 12 o'clock) similar to store bought cages. I started with 5' lengths which is a much smaller circle than you expect. I was able to build a 7' tall cage for 34 dollars, excluding welding supply (couple of rods?) hope this helps.

Do you really think that he is still waiting for an answer after more than 12 years? He asked that on: Jun 18, 2008, 2:03:38 PM

Well golly Michael. I was hoping to hear about heavy duty tomato cages. I was thinking about starting some tomatillo plants in my green house come about mid January. LOL.

On Usenet this doesn't apply so much, but I often reply to or ask questions on old threads on forums for a couple reasons. A lot of the back ground information is already right there in the thread. Often forums notify participants (or those who have a particular interest and selected notifications) of new posts in a thread. Not only do you short cut some of the information summary and internet experts who get off on parroting what has already been covered before, but you may get responses from original participants who long since solved the problem and improved on those solutions over time. It creates collections of knowledge around a topic instead of having to hunt across dozens if not hundreds of sources picking out the useful bits.

The only real negative is the net nannies who's only purpose in life is to look for something to complain about and say, "You know this is a 15 year old thread don't you." Sometimes I respond to them and explain my position and sometimes I just ignore them and restate my question.

Not always, but often the replies I am seeing on old Usenet threads are from a web interface that makes it look like the Usenet group is actually a part of a website or web forum.

Most replies that I see to many decade+ old messages offer nothing useful. At the least he could have told us where to get seeds to grow heavy duty tomatoes. I might want to do a remake of 'Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes', after all! ;-)

That was posted from a portal, not a Usenet server.

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It skims a few metalworking and electrical newsgroups, ant repackages them as a so called 'forum'.

I rely, to let them know the OP isn't likely still looking for a solution after so long, so they shouldn't be surprised if they don't reply. Nothing malicious intended.

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