Tried the fancy $50 tomato cage from the garden center next to the cheap $3 wire ones from the hardware store

The expensive one collapsed in a storm after two months but the cheap wire ones are still standing after a full season. I planted 6 Roma plants in my backyard in Nashville and the difference was night and day. Anyone else find that the simpler stuff holds up better?

3 comments

3 Comments

tyler4921mo ago

Man that "night and day" thing hits hard because I had almost the exact same experience with those fancy wire cages... paid like $30 for this green coated one at Lowe's that had this fancy fold-down design, looked real nice for about three weeks. Then a thunderstorm rolled through and it folded up like a cheap lawn chair, totally flattened my Celebrity tomatoes under all that twisted metal. Meanwhile my buddy gave me these old rusty cone cages his grandpa used back in the '80s that I had sitting in the garage, and those things are still holding up five tomato seasons later without a single wobble. The cheap stuff just works better because it's simple and doesn't have a bunch of moving parts to fail.

kelly.daniel1mo ago

And of course the cheap wire cages, the ones that look like they're made of twist ties from a bread bag, those hold up forever. I had a set of those flimsy green ones from Lowes, the kind that come with a little plastic coating that peels off after one season. A decent breeze would turn them into a pretzel, and my tomatoes would end up flopped over like they gave up on life. Your buddy's grandpa's cages probably weigh more than my whole raised bed setup, and they'll outlive us all. It's like the tomato cage industry figured out how to make things worse on purpose, or maybe they just forgot that a tomato plant doesn't need a transformer to stay upright. I'm convinced the secret is to find something that looks like it was salvaged from a scrap yard, that's the good stuff.

finleycooper23d ago

That's the thing, it's not just tomato cages. I notice this pattern all over the place now that I'm a bit older. My dad has a shop vac from 1987 that still runs like new, but I've gone through three of the modern ones in the last ten years. Same with hand tools. The simple stuff without all the bells and whistles just keeps going. I think companies figured out that if they make something that lasts forever, you only buy it once. So now everything is designed with some fancy feature that will break, and you have to replace the whole thing. It's like they're selling you a problem instead of a solution.