Last weekend, I finally broke down and bought tomato cages. The recent hot, wet weather has grown my delicate tomato seedlings into selfish, unruly teenagers. Unsatisfied with their own living spaces, they’ve sent sprawling vines into the jalapeños, bell peppers, the cucumbers, and the beans and started listening to obscure rock music from the 70s at all hours.
To be honest, I meant to do this several weeks sooner but I couldn’t find the same triangular folding cages I’d bought last year. If you’re ever wondering what kind of tomato cages to buy, I recommend the folding ones for several reasons:
- It’s much easier to fold a cage around a large tomato plant than it is to gently coax a generally non-cooperative and unwieldy cluster of tomato vines neatly and without some bruises into an upright, non-folding cage.
- Folding cages fold flat and store pretty much anywhere.
- They seem much easier to bend back into a useful shape than stiffer, non-folding cages.
Shameless confession: Plus, they come in green, which makes your cages semi-invisible in the garden. And, more importantly, in any photographs you might take of the garden. Witness the glaring sore thumb of a non-folding cage below:
Unfortunately, it seem word has gotten out about the awesomeness of folding cages because they were to be found nowhere at my usual nursery or hardware haunts so I had to make do with regular circular non-folding cages. The plus side of these cages, besides their obvious utilitarian purpose, is that I’ll be able to arrange them in an artful cone structure in the off-season.
One thing I didn’t expect to discover when installing the tomato cages was tomatoes. Especially large ones that look like they’ll be ready to ripen soon. I’ve got 4 Yellow Boy plants and 4 cherry tomatoes and they are both, in addition to putting out lots of lovely little yellow flowers, fruiting already.
And speaking of yellow flowers, I discovered these two hidden away beneath the squash leaves this morning.
Above – Some thyme, doing its best to take over the pot it shares with the tarragon and the rosemary – and below, the first eggplant blossom of the season.
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