My setup is different from yours. I use 8 feet of the cattle panel for each tomato bed that's 5' wide x 8' long. Then I put three plants on each side of the panel, so each has about 2 1/2 feet of root-space, stagger-plant them so they aren't crowding each other. The beds have 4-5 walkways around them. It's a bit of a reach to the middle but doable for picking tomatoes. It works fine for me if they get enough fertilizer and water.

Hello , hadn't thought of that. I was planning to put all plants on one side of the panel 2' apart as close to the panel as possible. I already have my panels up and driving 2x2 stakes is too hard in this dry soil to move the panels further apart this year . My point is , I do not know if I could get between the 5' wide rows with plants staggered and set away from the panel when they reach maturity. Thanks for the idea , I will look at it tomorrow , might work alright.I'm tired , probably not making sense.
THANKS!!!
CDGTXS

cdgtxs

I put the plant close to the panels on both sides so the branches reach through the panels. That means they have about 2 feet of reach in the bed itself and then the width of my walkways. I just keep all the straggly branches tied to the panel. I'm sure tomato cages would be much tidier, but I've done it this way for years!

But, yes, if you've already set up the panels 5 feet apart, it probably would be hard to get between them when the plants are large.

This is my first time planning to grow tomatoes so this discussion has been extremely valuable to me.

ddsack~ You're photos have been most helpful.
Are your rows of tomatoes running N-S or E-W?
What are the 'white' things in the ground beside the plants in the first photo?
What variety of tomatoes are we seeing in the second photo?

Thanks in advance!
KanuK

ddack

Boy, your tomato plants are sure tidier than mine! You keep them well-groomed!

I've grown tomatoes for years, but have always used traditional round cages - I've just plopped the plants in and let them go crazy. By the end of the season, the plant is huge and almost impenetrable for harvest and the cages really aren't providing the best support.

I'm really interested in trying the cattle panels instead but am at a complete loss regarding the tying. What do you like to use to tie? Is there a method to the tying? Shoot, I rarely even prune my tomatoes so any information about that would be fantastic, too.

Thanks in advance.

Where do you folks get your cattle panels? I've looked for several years but haven't found any at a reasonable price? Right now I am using 5' galvanized fence with a 1"X4" mesh. It works, but I think the cattle panels would be sturdier. Also the mesh is too small for tomato vines.
John A

Jencounter

You can also use CRW, concrete reinforcing wire, or remesh, it's called. Home Depot and Lowe's are good places to look. It's cheaper per foot than cattle panel though it comes in rolls instead of flat panels. You can get it with holes that are 4" x 4", a good size for reaching through, and it's available in slightly taller sizes, maybe 5' x 48'.

I just cut those plastic grocery bags into strips and use them for ties.

=====
John

Try Tractor Supply Company in CT. The store locator is at the top right of the page linked at the bottom.

I can get 4' x 16' cattle panel from them for around $22 each. After you put your zip in, you can go to Fences, Feedlot Panels to check on their cost in your area.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tractor Supply Company

Anney - thank you. I used the CRW to make my cages, so I have a ton of it lying around.

Do you just tie up the main stem and then keep tying as it gets taller? And do you prune?

Jencounter

I don't prune except for removing suckers below the first blossoms, so the plants grow every which way above that! I tie up the main stem as it grows and any really enthusiastic suckers.

That's great that you already have CRW! Just make sure it has enough stake support so it doesn't topple over from the weight of the plants and fruits later. With my cattle panel, we had to make "props" after a heavy rain, which made the plants very heavy and softened the soil around the two stakes on each end. The whole setup was leaning at about a 45-degree angle! This year, I'll be sure it's staked in the middle (on the opposite side) so it won't happen again.

I recycled my cattle panels from my barn corral when my horses finally all died off. You'd find them in farm supply stores, like Fleet Farm, I'd guess they are about $28 for a 16 foot panel. For a few years, I just let the extra two feet overhang each end of my 12 foot raised bed, but my husband complained about not being able to get under with the lawn mower, so I invited him to find a bolt-cutter heavy enough to cut the rods, and he did.

If you let them rest on the ground, the panels are pretty much self-supporting as long as they have a few heavy T posts to lean up against (wire them.) I set the posts a few feet in from the ends, so the middle section has less give. If you raise your panel off the ground to make it higher, you'd need more posts for stability. Since I live in a shorter season climate, I just let mine rest on the ground. Many of the taller tomatoes will flop over the top and grow back down.

Kanuk - The white things in the dirt in the first picture are the foam coffee cups that the transplants grew in, and had the variety printed on them with Sharpie marker. I usually end up with about 30 varieties, so tend to put them in alphabetical order in the beds, keeping shorter varieties in their own area, if possible. I put a handful of dirt in the empty cup, and scoop out a little depression for it, to keep it from blowing away. Those particular beds run north-south, but I have others in another location that run east-west and I just make sure to have the shorter row crop area on the south side of those. I use anything I have on hand to tie with, garden twine, baling twine, strips of cloth, even yarn. I like Annie's idea of plastic grocery bags. I tend to use the tie to train the branch back against and through the panel openings, rather than as sole support in itself. Some varieties have more flexible branches which can be woven without much tieing, but others are so stiff that you'll snap them if you try to force them back through. I'm not much of a pruner, except to clean up the lower part of the plant for better circulation of air. But sometimes late in the summer, I might remove some suckers gone wild that won't have time to produce tomatoes. If you plan to trade seeds, you probably should plan to bag blossoms, since the branches will soon intertwine and crossing is more likely. The red tomatoes in the front plant in the last post's pictures are an heirloom variety, Ernesto.

If you are unable to find cattle panels, there is another method I used in the past, which is just a bit more work as far as tieing up the tomatoes.

I used the tallest, heaviest T posts I could buy, and drilled a small hole through each end of the 12 foot wooden 2x4 board that I wired to the top of the post, looping the wire so it went over the top of the post several times. It looked pretty messy, but I never had a board fall. Then just tie up your tomatoes as they grow. I call this a suspended sprawl, after you have 4 or 5 strings per plant, you can tuck and weave most branches into the existing strings. I tried this with electrical conduit, but found that wood 2x4's are less saggy. I learned to put the support posts in several feet from the end of the bed, not at the very ends like in the first picture. These other beds are 4'x8' and have 5 plants on one side, with (unseen) pepper plants on the open side.

It's not a method for gardeners who don't want to mess around much after planting. The plants will do well in wind and heavy rain, unless you have let the suckers get too long without stringing them up. But even then, you can rescue them, and after looking bent and ugly for a couple of days, they will adjust and do fine.

Here is how I built cattle panel supports , simple enough , the hard part is driving the 2x2 stakes into the ground 2'
CDGTXS

Here is a link that might be useful: panels

I have 3'x16' raised beds and also use a 16' cattle panel on three tee posts 1' off the ground. I stagger mine and get 8 plants per bed. I cut some panels 2 blocks wide by the height of the panel, mine are 52" I think, and make a vee shape around the plant making a cage. I mount it to the big panel with cable ties or hog rings. Like this:

____/\____/\____/\____/\__
....\/......\/........\/........\/

Ignore the periods, it's the only way I could get the graphics to show right.

ronnywil , you make each side of the vee 2 squares right??? Does this make a large enough interior for large indet. plants??? Do you also raise the vee 1' off the ground???
CDGTXS

ddsack~ thanks so much for the response to my questions. Any issues regarding N-S or E-W rows besides shorter crops on south side? Is one better for ripening than another?
cdgtxs~ great organized panel setup. Really nice!
ronnywil~ really diggin' your improvised cage idea too. You're packing a lot of tomatoes into your 3' wide beds too. Space saving and effective works in my books!

I'm really enjoying this thread! Thx everyone.

Thanks Anney. Your link to Tractor Supply Co. was helpful, but the closest place is about 50 mi. away, and I don't have have vehicle to haul a 16' panel myself.
John A.

"Any issues regarding N-S or E-W rows besides shorter crops on south side? Is one better for ripening than another?"

The main issue is that if you have permanent beds, running them E-W gives you less flexibility in crop rotation, since the shorter vegies will always have to be on the south side of the beds. Something like summer lettuce might not mind. When I grew in a large garden plot, I mixed and changed row directions as part of my rotation plans from year to year, and never saw that it made much difference. A bigger issue is shade from tall trees or buildings, if you have that problem.

ddsack~thanks for sharing your experience on the subject

Hope someone is still reading this thread...

Thank you all for the great information on this thread. This is my third year growing tomatoes and the hard part, makes me crazy, is the messy growth habit of the plants. I still haven't found a good way to grow them neatly. Cattle wire sounds about the best solution to me.

I would like to do it this way....please comment if this makes sense to or not.

I want to make two rows of cattle wire about one foot apart and plant the tomato plants (indeterminate) between those to rows, about 20 inches apart. Maybe even stake the main stem inside. This way all the floppy branches will be supported on both sides and the plants will be contained in about one foot rows. I would space these double rows about 2-1/2 feet apart.

Does this arrangement sound like it would work?

Thanks so much!

Katayjini

katy

I think I've seen at least one poster who did what you're thinking about, planted tomatoes between two lengths of cattle panel. Maybe he or she will show up! I don't think you'd need to stake them, just keep the large stems tied to one or the other panel to keep them upright and also to keep them from leaning on their next-door neighbor.

Keep in mind that some tomato plants can have very long branches or secondary stems, and if they wander out of the panel holes, you'll need to guide them back between the two panels and tie them in place.

But that's no different than what you have to do with one length of cattle panel. You'll probably just need to do it for fewer recalcitrant branches.

anney, thank you for your helpful comment. There is another discussion going on now about staking and that cages are best. Can't stand them. Will report back how it as with the cattle wire. K.

Katy

I think it's the same thing I'm doing this year. I decided
to close both ends to form a rectangle. Objective is to also contain the branches at the ends and for added stability. I did this by bending ONE end of each panel by about 18". The bended end of one panel is then connected to the straight end of the other. I also subdivided this rectangle by inserting "walls" of same material every 24". By the way I use CRW, the rust color matches the leaf mulch I thought.

victor, closing the ends sounds like a great idea for keeping things contained. I might end up using CRW as well because it seems very hard to find cattle wire here. Bellatrix in the vegetable forum (zucchini thread) has used CRW with great success. K.

I bought five cattle panels this year and what I did was to arch them side by side. I used 4 ft T bars to anchor them and tied them together with plastic ties.

I got them from a farm supply company (Dicky Bubs?)about twenty miles from my house and rented a Lowes truck to get them home. They were very easy to haul in the truck because the bed is 8' and there are two 4'grills on both ends of the bed to tie them off on. I think I paid $23/panel.

I'm at work now but I'll see if I can figure out how to post a picture when I get home tonight.

Mark

bump for salvage - good photos

I've seen the CRW at HD, but the rust kind of concerned me. This might be a silly questiuon, but does the rust get all over the tomatoes?

anney - Can the 16' panels at Tractor Supply Co.be rolled up enough to fit in the back of an SUV? I'm a little uncertain about how to get them home. Thanks!

Hi, wren!

You could probably roll up the 16 foot lengths of cattle panel and tie them so they'd fit in the back of an SUV as long as you have a five-foot depth that you could slide them into. But it would take a couple of really strong people to roll, hold, and tie them!

Ddsack, I looove your cattle panel trellis! I am restricted to conatiners, but if I ever get a yard, this will be my #1 choice for in-ground support. Thanks for sharing your pics!

anney - Thank you for responding. Tractor Supply in Winder only carries 34" panels. I might try to cut a 16' panel in half and get the halfs in the SUV (or tied to the top rack). I can't find 5' panels anywhere in the Atlanta area. Where did you get your panels? Thanks.

wren

Yes, we cut the 16 ft length in half to fit them in the truck. There are several TSC stores in Georgia, and this is the panel you want. There is a note indicating that it's available only in Texas, but it's certainly available here in Canton, GA, at $19.99 apiece. What you might do is click on the link in this sentence to see some stores other than the Winder one. Please check your local store for pricing.

You can call the stores closest to you and have the SKU Number, 3610480, ready so they can check the availability, I believe in their computers.

I have made tomato cages out of cattle panels using bolt cutters to seperate sections of panel. each cage has four sides with I believe two square 6" sections. I take off the bottom row of wire and middle bottom upright wire to allow legs which can be inserted into ground for firm footing. I get enough sections for two cages out of each panel making each cage about 10-12 bucks each. I wire the panels together using a half inch pipe and wire around the pipe to allow the sides room to collapse and fold up. I let one corner free so that they can be unwrapped from around the plant come fall and moved to a new location the next spring so you can rotate sections of garden for tomato patch.