I have never liked tomato cages. Typically, the cages I have tried to erect in the past do quite well until the tomato vines grow larger and begin to hang heavy with fruit. Then, one day I go out to the garden and the cages are no longer erect but lying sideways on the ground. I have tried stakes, which do okay until the vines grow and fruit hangs heavy, then the tomato limbs flop down at their sides and the plant begins to resemble a scarecrow.
My daddy didn’t use stakes or cages. He just let the vines do their thing. The plants sprawled on the ground like they were taking a well-earned nap and we never lacked for tomatoes.
Tomatoes are native to South America and in the wild, no one ever staked or put cages around them, and they somehow prospered.
When someone discovered that the colorful fruits were good to eat, the seeds were brought from Mexico to Spain by early explorers. From there the plant spread to Italy by the mid-1500s where it began to be incorporated into regional cuisine. Try to imagine Italians without tomatoes?
In the early 1700s, the tomato returned to the Americas through European colonists. Thomas Jefferson grew lots of tomatoes in his vegetable garden at Monticello and enjoyed eating the fruit and I suppose he used stakes, but not cages.
Last year, I broke down invested in two steel, wire tomato cages from Lowe’s. They looked easy to assemble and reasonably sturdy. They worked wonderfully and I bought two more last week.
Now, if we get a little rain over the next two months and a nor-easter doesn’t blow my cages away, I hope to be eating lots of ‘mater sandwiches, cage-free or not.