the 18 inch ones

well you must be a good gardener since they are growing so well! Your spacing sounds good for indeterminate plants - they need some breathing space. I have not used the texas cages so I cannot comment on that. But the 18 sounds good compared to 24 so you might get better air circulation between the cages. The tomato forum on gardenweb has tons of thread on tomato supports. I made mine from concrete wire mesh that is 5 feet high, and the diameter is about 20 inches. Last few years there were two staked side by side on the north side of a few of my 4'x4' boxes (shorter veggies to the south of the tomatoes so that the tomatoes would get more light. There was some blight and tomato speck last year so I rotated the tomatoes out of the SFG boxes into a different part of the garden.

One tip you will learn in growing tomatoes is that it is good to get any stakes and cages in at the time of planting so you do not disturb the roots later with the stake. Plus it can be hard to get cages around plants that have grown larger.

:) Rachel

Thanks for the replies. I know I should have decided this long ago, but I didn't expect them to get big so quickly!

I ended up ordering the 20" cages (the don't make the 18" anymore, just 20" and 24") and they should be here in a couple of days. I have temporarily staked the plants by gently tying them and having a stake go through the tape and into the ground far away from roots. I also decided to trellis 2 of the tomatoes, since they are smaller and I could easily put a PVC trellis up where they are located. As my husband says, it's all an experiment. I see lots of cherry tomatoes growing so hopefully things will continue to go well.