Why not just grow them inside of a ring of chicken wire or other welded wire tomato cage? Not the tomato cones sold in stores but a cylinder made of welded wire mesh.

This is my first year growing tomatillos, I put them in by my tomatoes and put them in a tomato cage. Is this going to be a problem? My tomatoes are all against a wall so when they get bigger than the cage, (I get the large cages) I support them to the wall. My heirlooms grow about 6'-8' tall. Will this work with the tomatillos also?

Tomato cages work OK for tomatillos, if you anchor them well. Otherwise they will tip over.

Sounds like raisemybeds has a good idea also.

Jim

I agree with the advice regarding the use of wire tomato cages to support tomatillos. They provide just enough support... and since they are useless for tomatoes, at least then you can get some use out of them. ;-)

Anchor those cages with a piece of rebar attached to 1 or 2 legs and driven into the soil. Works well for egplant too.

I am using my tomato cages for ground cherries (a tomatillo relative).

The wire cones sold in stores are worthless. The thing to do is buy a 6 to 8 foot roll of concrete reinforcing mesh, unroll it, cut loose the middle wire on either side of it, then cut lengths that are 60, 66, and 72 inches long, roll them into cylinders and voila, you have strong cages with 6 inch openings that have strong wire legs you can push into the ground to solidly anchor them, and if you vary the diameters you can nest them inside of each other for storage.

For tall tomatos, just remove one outside wire from the lengths instead of cutting them in two, and you have a 6 to 8 foot cylinder with wire legs you can push into the ground.

I am going to make cages next year. The little cone-shaped ones are good for ground cherries, peppers, and eggplant, not tomatoes lol!!!!

I do not use CRW cages w/rebar because I grow in raised beds and those things need to be anchored soundly into firm ground. My growing environment is loose friable garden soil that is quite deep. It is too soft for anything that heavy to be used. For the tomatoes I have foldable lightweight square cages held with a single very tall stake, but even those tip over sometimes late in the season so I have to keep watch. My need for the tomatillos growth pattern to be tamed would not be achieved by a cage, I don't think, because they are thick-stemmed and short enough that they support themselves UPRIGHT, but their sheer GIRTH, in my opinion, is what needs to be reigned in, or managed, and a cage does nothing by itself to limit width. It's not really support that I am debating, it's "width management". A cage would let them be wide - the outward branches would just stick out from the cage - not a solution to the bushiness of the tomatillo monster. Ambitious stake-tying forces the fatness to be vertical. I am doing it every couple of days now and the plants, as I describe, are obeying me.

Meant to post this a couple of weeks ago but forgot - needed to get a picture first. I use the remesh cages that are no longer suitable for tomatoes on eggplants and tomatillos..

{{gwi:62262}}

Grandad, thanks for posting that excellent pic! That's a nice forest of healthy plants you have there!

Those are exactly the cages I was talking about. You can remove the bottom wire and have legs to spike them into the ground, or leave the bottom wire on and they just set on top of the soil.