Tomato Monsters!

While tomatoes seem to be what everyone starts out growing, they aren't my favorite for eating.  As a compromise, I went with cherry tomatoes - small and very snackable!  Tomato plants grow too large for inclusion in the cattle trough, so I planted my cherry tomato plants next to the house.  I put out little wire tomato cages and started watering.  Let's be honest - I was clueless how large these things would get.  By the middle of the summer, my four small cherry tomato plants had become full-blown tomato monsters.  They outgrew the cages early-on, growing out the tops and spilling over the sides.  The tomato octopus arms ran into the yard and mowing around them became difficult.  I couldn't always reach inside and underneath all the stems and leaves to pick the interior tomatoes, so the ones in the center that ripened soon rotted.  I was picking bowls full of cherry tomatoes - giving them away at work and through the neighborhood.  It was a disaster!  Even this year I have cherry tomato plants coming up next to the house from all the ones that were dropped last year.

When this spring rolled around, I knew things had to be done differently.  These tomato monsters needed major taming!  After scoping out options at the local hardware store, the fencing caught my eye.  Rolled galvanized steel fencing - 6 ft tall.  I bought two 6 ft sections (clipping the wire so that horizontal ends were longer and sticking out) and 4 posts.  Here I must include a warning for anyone that may try this themselves - those ends that were clipped are sharp!  I managed to slice my leg on one unloading it from the truck.   I rolled the fencing and turned under the clipped posts with needle-nosed pliers so that it would stay tubular.  Then I stood it up around my baby tomato plants and threaded a post through the wire mesh on either side, driving those into the ground to keep the cage standing.  My hands happen to fit through the openings in the cage, but you could also clip out some of the cage cross-hairs to create larger openings for picking interior tomatoes once your plants are producing.

At first, the tomato plant looked awfully small in that big cage, but now it's almost 5 ft tall and still growing!  As the tomato plant grows, I push the top growth back into the cage so that it continues to grow inside instead of spreading out too much.  Some still snuck out, but this year's tomato plant is much more tamed than the monsters of last year!  Now I just need those baby tomatoes to ripen.  Who has some great cherry tomato recipes?