Here's a photo of my brother-in-law's concrete mesh cage, if you can make it out. There's a second one partially in frame on the left. His cages are 24-28" in diameter, and there is 2-3' space between each one. Tight squeeze in July (pictured).

He's been using them for over a decade, lots of surface rust but but still completely sound. He stakes them in place with metal fence posts. I believe he had 7-8 cages in use this year.

His only complaint is that they aren't tall enough. They are approximately 5' tall. The tomato plants grow over and hang down, and the exposed fruit hanging outside the cage gets sunscald.

That's a Pink Brandywine I started from seed, and you can't really tell but it is LOADED with huge tomatoes. I counted at least 16. And to make matters worse, he hasn't watered or fertilized once all Summer, and has much fewer blight problems than my plants. Talk about irritating! I am lucky to get 4 good tomatoes per Brandywine plant.

Extensions
 

Just make an additional cage of the desired length and snap tie it to the top of the original. Leave the bottom row with "Legs", cut the horizontal pieces. Works great and you can have any height over 5'.

I have made cages out of concrete wire. They are almost useless as are most tomato cages. I use them in an emergency but am never a happy traveler.

I use rebar eight feet in length and tie the tomato plant with strings overhead. I don't sucker and maintenance is minimal also the fruit does not get crowded. [URL]http://www.durgan.org/URL/?HPJUS[/URL] 4 May 2014 Overhead Tomato Support Structure
A support structure for 24 tomato plants was constructed from rebar, fence posts and plastic ties. The structure is slightly over 6 feet high. The plants are tied via 1/4 inch soft rope as required.The plants are free to grow unimpeded.

For some plants a simple 4 by 8 concrete mesh is used and the plants string tied to the horizontal support. This works well for cherry type also for normal plants. [URL="http://www.durgan.org/URL/?VARPU"]http://www.durgan.org/URL/?VARPU [/URL] 22 May 2014 Three Lemon Boy Tomatoes planted Three Lemon Boy plants were purchased and planted outdoors. This hybrid produces many palm sized tomatoes, bright yellow in color and usually perfect form, with no imperfections. The plants will be allowed to free reign and supported by strings along the trellis, which use to be for luffa plants, which I no longer grow.

Usually I have under 50 plants. For many plants horizontal strings along the plants is probably necessary. I notice the big field commercial growers use strings along both sides of the plants to keep most of the fruit off the ground.

I made some mater cages from concrete wire but wanted taller than the 5ft width, so I cut the wire at 6ft long and 5ft wide so I would have 6ft tall cages and you could do that for how ever tall you wanted them say 7-8ft tall and I use hog rings to hold them together. my only thought is how long will the hog rings hold.

Hog Rings??
 

Bend over the ends of the metal or use plastic snap ties.

[QUOTE=whoose;552913]Bend over the ends of the metal or use plastic snap ties.[/QUOTE]

Are you asking what a hog ring is?
Worth

No Hog Rings
 

Worth. No just giving some alternatives.

If you use a hook, you can open them up at the end of the season and place one inside the other for storage.

doing it the way I'm talking about there are no free wire ends to make into hooks you could always cut the edge wire off and do it that way though. Yeah I didn't think that storage thing through. I guess I can find some use for them I the winter.

Leaf collection cages.:)
Worth

[QUOTE=Worth1;552929]Are you asking what a hog ring is?
Worth[/QUOTE]

Now I know. Always good to learn something new every day :yes:

Worth I'm building a vermacomposting bin out of a 275 gallon tote for that!

Question. I bought a 5'x150' roll of crw and I am debating what would be the best set up to cut this into. I'd like to cut it length wise so I can make them as high as I want. If I cut the width in half I'd get 30 inches for circumfrence and about 9.5 inch diameter. This would work space wise given my garden, 12'x14', that has to be fenced for deer. I am wondering if the rewire would be strong enough at this smaller diameter? I plan on anchoring each chage in the ground to a 4' t bar style fence post. Anyone try anything similar? Thanks for any suggestions!

[QUOTE=Emeoba69;638626]Question. I bought a 5'x150' roll of crw and I am debating what would be the best set up to cut this into. I'd like to cut it length wise so I can make them as high as I want. If I cut the width in half I'd get 30 inches for circumfrence and about 9.5 inch diameter. This would work space wise given my garden, 12'x14', that has to be fenced for deer. I am wondering if the rewire would be strong enough at this smaller diameter? I plan on anchoring each chage in the ground to a 4' t bar style fence post. Anyone try anything similar? Thanks for any suggestions![/QUOTE]

Small circumferences are harder to put together, bending it will be fun fun fun.

My brother tried taller cages that way last year and I'm not sure how well it worked. They were full width, so about 18" w/o overlapping one square. I think they got top heavy at 6+ feet. Without overlapping a square, CRW cages are not nearly as stiff.

I personally like the 11 or 12 square cages, overlapped 1 square and zip tied, making a stiff 18/20" cage. For taller, you could take another cage of the same diameter, cut that twice and get 2 18" extenders and 1 12" extender.

Four 5' cages worth of wire would give you three cages at 6-1/2', 6-1/2', and a 6'.

If you rip it lengthwise, 10 squares would become 4 squares across and 5 squares across, with the cutoff sticking out one side or the other or both. That would be a really small diameter, and they would not be overlapped.

I have some smaller cages from ends. The smallest I like are 8 squares, overlapped to 7. Any smaller than that, I leave them open and "stitch" the open front with twine.