How to Build a Hot-House Tomato Cage

Growing tomatoes in a hot house helps extend their growing season into the colder months, and hot-house tomatoes generally produce larger crops than outdoor tomatoes. Since tomatoes are sprawling plants, cages or stakes help them grow upright, take up less horizontal growing space and be more productive. Tomato cages also help keep tomatoes cleaner, because they lift the tomatoes up off the soil. Building a tomato cage takes pretty basic supplies, including plant pots and pasture wire.

Tomato plant in a pot with a 21-inch diameter
5 1/2-foot by 4-foot pasture wire
Twist-ties or wire
3 wooden stakes

Instructions

- 1
  Form a cylinder out of the pasture wire by bending it in a circle. Bend it so that the 5 1/2-foot length of the wire makes up the circumference of the cylinder. The 5 1/2 feet of wire should create a cage with an 18- to 20-inch diameter.
- 2
  Attach the two wire edges together into the cylinder shape with twist-ties or wire.
- 3
  Stick the cage into the soil around the tomato plant. Use a pot that has a diameter slightly greater than 20 inches, so that the cage can stick down about a foot into the soil, even as the pot tapers inward toward the bottom.
- 4
  Stick three wooden support stakes into the soil around the edges of the cage to help hold the cage up as the tomato plant grows and leans on it.

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