All of those Cherry tomatoes will grow HUGE (like 10' tall)! They look like they are pretty close together as well. You will soon have a jungle of tangled vines that will make harvest more challenging. It will be difficult to tell the difference between a ripe Sungold and a just blushing SS 100.

But to answer your question. I put up a trellis with 8' supports (I use 2x4s attached to the edge of my raised bed frame) on each side of the bed and run coated wire stretched between the supports about every 1' to the top of the 2x4s. As the plants grow I tie the vines to the wire using plastic grocery bags cut into 1" wide strips.

I use 5' cages and just let them sprawl over top. It does get messy at times though lol. If I ever get enough money to throw away, I'll get taller cages, but alas...

You can add another level of cage if you want, for just the few you have, it wouldn't be too difficult. Or you could put a few posts that extend higher. It probably wouldn't be too big a problem for the smaller-fruited plants, but the heavier the fruit, the more chance of breakage.

I use Texas Tomato Cages that are 2 feet in diameter and about six feet tall when pushed into the ground. Cherry tomatoes get enormous. If I had cages tall enough to contain the tops I'd need a ladder to pick them. I let them sprawl over the top. The vines bend, but don't break and just keep on pumping out fruit. I agree with above that your plants are too close together. Three to four feet apart would be far better. That being said, if you keep the plants watered and fertilized, you should be alright if they don't get that gray moldy stuff (old brain won't come up with the name!) that comes from not enough air moving around. Space them better next year.

That's a good point about cherries. You will never have a cage or trellis big enough for cherries. (Well, if you want one, you may have to get a neighborhood or city height exemption.) Cherries just go up and over and keep going. I have 15 foot vines right now, that are still growing rapidly, and are now practically doubled over the trellises they are on. The main purpose of a cage is to keep 'em off the ground.

And as I posted on your other post of this question on the Tomato Forum, you really, really need to stake those cages better or you are going to have a toppled mess once those plants get some size to them. We have all learned that the hard way unfortunately.

Dave

Sweet 100 I can vouch for just gro and grow. I only use 54 inch cages reinforced upright with stakes, for all the tomatoes and just let um topple over the top although I'm in zone 4 and they only get maybe a foot taller than the cage From what I gather, in a tomatoes natural tropic environment they don't gro upright

Thanks for all the comments. The plants are spaced about 30 inches from each other. I will tie up the cages to stakes, so they dont topple in winds.

Next year you are going to want to space those varieties further apart. Sungold and the Sweet varieties are some of the most huge varieties in existence and grow to easily 4 feet wide. So yeah, you'll want to use several stakes on each cage.

Dave

All things have a limit and tomato cages are just one more thing that may not be the best suited for those varieties. The Chefs Choice Orange might be the only exception but if you have a potato leaf plant it too is a seed company mix-up and will likely be a red grape tomato as well, therefore also very tall growing.

My obvious solution for those varieties is to spend a little extra and erect a high tunnel. Using stringline support the plants can grow 25 feet tall and you are still in good shape. When plants get too tall to reach you simply lower the stringline.

Cages work fine for determinate varieties. I use a few hundred for my determinate varieties but for tall growing indeterminate varieties cages, even the 5 ft. tell Texas type, are just no well suited, especially when you try to pick those little suckers through the cages.

Wow! 3 cherries? Do you have plans for them?

I used to grow 1 sungold when we were both working and had several people from work and ukulele groups to give to. I would take a gallon at a time to work at least 1x per week!

Now, being retired, I have given up on the sungolds because they were TOO prolific and we have only a couple of neighbors who don't garden, no co-workers and we do still have our uke buddies but that's it.

I tried making a sauce with the sungolds, but it tasted too acidic to me. Nancy

Dave, would you clarify the " Sacrifice all that lost production" statement. I don't know of anyone using tunnels that does not achieve much better production in high tunnels. I plant about equal number of plants in high tunnels and in field using cages and 90% of my tomato sales income is from tunnel fruits. No comparison there.

My 1000+ cages were purchased but if you read about those being used on this forum you'll find that they are "Built" using bolt cutters, pliers and other tools. It is all just a matter of decision but if you were building a doghouse you would want to make sure it was big enough for your dog. Why not do the same for your tomato plants?

Most home gardeners are not going to high tunnels. Perhaps some fruit would be earlier, but we are not selling early high priced tomatoes. I rotate tomatoes .

Is it true that tomatoes in tunnels are disease free...year after year?

Not disease free, even on year #1 but less of certain diseases, more of others, depending on management. Probably biggest problem disease is Leaf mold, but I don't notice much of it until October, after I have been harvesting for 5 months. Variety selection helps since some varieties have LM resistance but I usually grow over 100 varieties in tunnels.

But I don't rotate in tunnels because tomatoes are my best vegetable value crop and tunnel tomatoes are less blemished and bring a better price. I've had continuous tomatoes in tunnels since 2001, when I started using them.

"Dave, would you clarify the " Sacrifice all that lost production"
statement. I don't know of anyone using tunnels that does not achieve
much better production in high tunnels."

You can't begin to accurately compare high tunnel production with hundreds of plants pruned to a single stem and stringed to the average home gardener's production from his 10-20 plants (or in this case 5 plants) exposed to the elements. It can't even be accurately compared to gardeners such as myself with my garden of 100+ plants. As you can attest the environmental risks the average home gardener contends with are substantially reduced in tunnel production. So the tunnel grower is always going to get higher production.

So if the home gardener aggressively prunes his few plants it results a substantial loss in fruit production. That loss is primarily from the sacrificing all those fruit producing branches. Then there is secondary loss from disease, pests, weather, etc.

Dave