Tomato Cage Design

Tomato cages

A tomato cage is an inexpensive galvanized steel wire frame originally designed to support tomato plants in the garden, usually with three long wires soldered to three hoops of proportionally increasing sizes. The legs are pushed into the ground around a tomato plant, while the circular hoops support the growing vines. Standard round tomato cages have hoops that are 12-, 14 or 18-inches in diameter. Cage heights range from 33-inches to 54-inches. Cages can be found in most home improvement stores, local hardware stores or garden centers.

A tomato-cage Christmas tree takes two tomato cages and inserts them inside one another, offsetting the leg wires so the six wires are evenly spaced. This frame is then turned upside down and the two cages are held together with duct tape or zip ties (or both). The six wires are gathered at the top to make a peak.

Christmas lights can then be strung onto this armature.

Some DIY'ers have found that, during rain or wet snow, lights attached directly to the metal frame may occasionally trip a GFCI even when no actual wiring fault exists. I Two solutions have been used to overcome this problem: wrapping the entire metal frame in plastic film wrap (available at office-supply stores) before stringing lights or setting the tree on a Styrofoam pad.

Today, many DIY'ers also wrap tomato cages with pixel strings or pixel nodes, making this inexpensive frame suitable for both traditional lights and modern pixel displays.