Tomato Plant Supports for your Garden

Tomato plant supports help keep plants and fruit off the ground. This is good because when leaves and fruit touch the ground, they are more susceptible to disease, fungus and critters, especially slugs.

Tomato plant supports come in all shapes and sizes from a simple stake to colorful steel ladders and coils and they can all do the job. The differences between them have more to do with what they will look like in your garden, how much work you will need to do to keep the plant in or on the support and the size of your gardening budget.

Check the description of the sauce tomato plants you have chosen to grow. Determinate varieties tend to be sturdy and no taller than about 5-feet. When planting these in the garden, you can either plop a tomato cage over each plant or insert a 5' stake into the soil right next to the stem. As the plant grows, keep it tucked inside the cage or continue to tie the stem gently to the stake to keep it upright.

If your tomato variety is indeterminate, you will need a taller, stronger support. Indeterminate tomato varieties are vine-like, can grow to over 8 feet and produce more fruit than the plant can support on it's own. If grown without support, these plants will sprawl on the ground.

Over the years, I have used bamboo stakes, round tomato cages, square tomato cages and steel tomato ladders to support my tomatoes.

Stakes are the least expensive, however I am not reliably consistent in tying my plants to the stake and so at some point they inevitably turn into a crazy hedge that is difficult to harvest from and sometimes the whole thing falls over.

The round tomato cages are inexpensive, but in my experience they have not been tall enough even for my determinate plants and I don't like how they look in my beds.

An article on one gardener's experience with tomato ladders
Gardener's Supply Companyprompted me to purchase a set of five. I have been happy with the ladders--they are strong, tall, stack easily for storage and can be placed in any configuration within the bed The drawback for me is that they are too spendy for me to purchase enough for my entire tomato sauce garden all at once.

To read the article on tomato ladders, click on the Gardener's Supply Company link above and then go to:Tomato Ladders and click on Perfect Tomato Supports under More Information.

I also like using the square metal cages, especially because I acquired a bunch of them free! They are less expensive than ladders, I can stack two of them and secure them with wire for tall plants and they fold flat for storage. I like the neat boxy look they make in my garden. It's easy to keep the plants tucked in the cage too, even if I don't check on them very often and I can reach right in and harvest the fruit through the cage.

I prefer the square cages from Gardens Alive! that come in a set of two with connectors to create a third cage in-between. One drawback with these is that the plants need to be placed three in a line and that doesn't fit all of my beds.

My new favorite way to support my tomato plants is by "tying-up." I use a can of biodegradable paper-covered wire with a wire cutter attached to the top of the can. I wind a large loop (with room to grow) around the base of the stem and then gently wind it a few times around the stem. Then I bring the wire up and over a bar placed high above the plant and lightly twist the excess around the main wire so it will stay put. Then as the plant grows, I can untwist the wire to wrap it a couple more times around the plant stem. Eventually the plant may grow all the way up to the bar but it will be strongly supported all the way. I also used the wire to tie up 4 more side shoot stems and then prune all of the rest that appear. I learned this technique in The Great Tomato Book by Gary Ibsen, owner of Tomato Fest. This technique is a little tedious until you get all of the stems initially tied up but it sure makes the tomato garden look really neat.

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