In the Organic garden - Tomato cages & Storms

 On the 4th of July we had a couple of storms track across our area. The second storm brought pea sized hail with extreme wind and rain. The damage was quick and disastrous for many plants. My Japanese lilac in the front of the house lost a large section which came down very quickly at the start of the storm. Our neighbor had a very large dead tree land in the backyard of the next neighbor, and my garden was really whipped into a frenzy of destruction.

This is the front of the house right after the tree lilac went down. You can see the hail starting to collect (the white stuff on the ground).

This is the poor pepper plant that lost all of its leaves. You can also see the smashed squash behind it. That's pretty much the look of the whole garden. 

   Only one of my 

cherry tomatoes fell over but for the most part they fared better than the garden.

Since the "A" frame I usually try to secure the cherry tomatoes with was not really working well

I decided to get some 6' galvanized fencing and build my own  cages. First I measured the circumference of the top of the pots and then gave them another 6 to 8 inches overlap. I cut them halfway in the rectangles in order to give me a wire to make the hook from. I wanted it to hold but not be so difficult to undo at the end of the season. 

I kept the tomato stake in the middle and only had two of them needing to be wired a little to straighten them out. My hand is small enough to fit in between the wires but you could easily cut some of the in between wires to make a larger opening if need be.

So there you have all 4 varieties of cherry tomato in their new cages. I hope that they will be more stable and give the plants more support too. I will hopefully remember to give an update later on. If you are wondering, I usually grow my cherry tomatoes in pots to keep all those falling tomatoes from becoming weeds next season. If you are wondering the varieties of  cherry tomatoes they are Yellow Pear, Sunsugar, Sweet treat, and Jasper. I start all my tomato seeds the end of Feb. or beginning of March inside the house. 

Now I will wait and hope my garden can recover enough to produce something. 

As always, happy gardening!