When I removed the wire fencing on three sides of the backyard garden, I also removed several steel rebars that were used as stakes to hold the wire fence in place. The size of these corrugated rebars are 10 mm and these were cut into 5-feet tall each. I am going to transfer these wire fencing in the new hill garden to ward off the chickens and the dogs from that area. The backyard garden does not really need a fence now because the chickens are already fenced in and we don't have a dog or a cat ( except for the neighbor's cat) so if I should ever decide to make a fence in this backyard garden, I would like to use a picket fence someday. Anyway, I thought about how best to use these old rebars that I took from the fence. So after my brother finished making the beans and peas trellis, I asked him if he could make me a tomato cage using these old rebars. Since these rebars were already cut at 5-feet tall, they're just the perfect height for a tomato cage. Besides, we have 2 extra pieces of 8 mm corrugated rebars that were not used when they made the outdoor aviary. So with these materials, my brother made 2 pieces of tomato cages that are 5-feet tall. I asked him to make the tomato cages into a triangle design with two sides having rebars going across them at a 1-foot distance from the top while one side is to be left open. I wanted this open side as my access to the plants and I can always use a string on this side to hold the plants as needed.
My DH used to tie the tomatoes on a stick that was placed near the plants using the green garden ties. Sometimes, he would used jute ropes to encircle the plants around the sticks so it looks like a round tomato cage. It's just that we have to take out the ropes once the tomatoes have been gathered and that's too laborious. So now that we have this two pieces of steel tomato cages, it should make the clean up much easier with no hassle. Just pull up the cages once the season is over and it can be stored inside for safe keeping until the next planting season is here.
