Building Trellis Supports For Our Tomato Plants

We built a support system for our tomato plants!

Our tomato plants are off to a fantastic start this year!  They're doing so great that they need a lot of additional support!

We started the season by using some tomato cages we already had & using stakes for the rest.  We quickly outgrew that situation, so we needed to do something more.  Even the tomato cages weren't strong enough to contain these tomatoes!

I saw this homemade tomato trellis on Pinterest & I knew I wanted to do something similar.

My husband, James, & I used posts from Tractor Supply.  For the trellis wire, we used 17 gauge electric fence wire.  We ended up using almost the entire roll of wire for the trellis!  We'll probably add more wire to the top of the posts as the plants grow.

James spent a Saturday morning stringing the trellis together.  We were initially going to put posts on each end of the tomato rows, but we still needed more support, so we added even more posts in the middle.

To create the trellis, James wrapped the wire around to create an area between the plants so they could sit on the wire & be supported.  He did this in a few p so the tomato plants l have support as they grow taller.  He even wrapped the plants with tomato cages around them 

because they needed extra support!

We're now in the process of weaving the tomatoes around the trellis.  It's been super hot here, so working in the garden has been minimal lately.  We're still sneaking some time in the early morning & at night to get in the garden to tend.  Building the trellis was the main thing we wanted to get done, so now it's a bit of weaving here & there.

We honestly didn't expect our tomatoes to grow this out of control!  These are the most giant tomato plants we've ever had in our four gardening seasons!  We already have little tomatoes starting!

It would have been m easier to build the trellis while the tomatoes were still small, but we didn't expect such a great crop!  Now we're just trying to support our plants the best we can because there will be a lot of tomatoes this year!

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originally posted: 07.13.20 // last updated: 06.13.23