I’ve shared before the unexpected garden treasure I received from my elderly neighbor next door, whose husband planted bamboo some years before his passing, hoping to furnish the growth to our local zoo’s red pandas. The zoo turned him down, evidently having certified food sources for these valued animals, but the bamboo next door grows on.
I accepted the bamboo, planning to use it to support my pole beans. (And I do have several bean teepees in place, increasingly covered with growing bean vines.) What to do with the rest didn’t come to me immediately, until my compulsively overplanted tomatoes took off and passed my knees in height. In my ever-stringent effort to keep garden expenses to a minimum, it occurred to me that I could put my excess bamboo to use in the form of tomato cages.

I'm using my excess bamboo to make tomato cages.
There’s nothing special about their design. I don’t have a lot of extra time, so I wanted to keep their construction as simple as possible. First, I use a wood stake to make four post holes, into which I drop four sturdy pieces of bamboo, cut to 40 inches in length.

The holes are about eight inches deep and help keep the bamboo tomato cages in place and upright.
I used plain old yarn that I had in my closet to tie four smaller pieces of bamboo to join them surrounding the tomato plant, and I do this on two levels, although I could add a third if the tomato plants outgrow these.

Yarn wrapped around the bamboo and tied with square knots is all that holds these cages together.
I had enough bamboo to make cages to support 30 tomato plants. That’s about half of what I have planted. I haven’t yet decided what to use to support the rest, but I have to think of something soon. (I’ll let you know how that goes. My sister says she has a few wire cages left over from past seasons that she can lend me.) Whatever I come up with, I don’t think I can match the rustic charm of the cages I have in place so far.

I have 30 bamboo tomato cages in place along the south side of my little farm house.
The thing about using natural materials is that the pieces are not always uniformly straight, but I don’t mind. It all adds to their beauty. I’m not sure how bamboo weathers, but I’m hoping that these cages will last for several seasons.
My tomatoes share their bed with 18 pumpkin vines growing from six hills, along with random plantings of herbs, nasturtiums, marigolds and sunflowers. I can’t wait to see what this garden bed will look like in a few weeks.
21 comments
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July 3, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Dana (The Homesteading Housewife)
Nice~!
July 3, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Matt
These looks great! Certainly much nicer than the metal ones I’m used to. How deep is your soil? I think you’re going to have to put a second story on these as they grow 🙂
July 3, 2009 at 9:03 pm
cindyscottday
This bed is raised (and bordered with railroad ties that I will be getting rid of very soon). The cultivation depth is at least twelve inches. But much of it had been seeded with grass when we moved in. So it was a big deal to turn over all of the sod. It had to be done by hand, as there were some utility wires that had to be avoided. Thankfully, it all went well and, apart from dealing with a lot of persistent crab grass (which is the main weed), the tomatoes and pumpkin vines are growing lavishly.
July 3, 2009 at 11:02 pm
cindyscottday
I’ve run out of bamboo, but I was thinking I could remove the bottom level & move those rods up to the top if needed. A little more work than I want, but it will get me through the season until I can get my hands on more bamboo.
July 3, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Michael Nolan
Absolutely fantastic work! I need some of these myself as we have 17 donated tomato plants in the community garden for the Atlanta Food Bank and no cages for them!
YIKES!
July 4, 2009 at 1:45 am
Jimmy Cracked-Corn
I built a very similar structure for my tomatoes this year too. I’m not finding mine to be very sturdy at all. I used nails instead of yarn and it’s just flimsy now that the weight of the fruit is on it. Maybe I needed a wider footprint.
July 4, 2009 at 11:07 am
cindyscottday
If anything fails on these cages, it won’t be the joints. They are very secure. The bamboo is as sturdy as any bamboo, but much of the cross bars are about 1/2 inch thick, so it is possible the weight of the tomatoes could overwhelm them. I’m reasonably confident they will hold up well, but we will see.
July 4, 2009 at 12:51 pm
daniel (food dryer)
Bamboo almost always adds class to a garden. Ounce-for-ounce, it’s supposed to be one of the strongest growable building materials, so I suspect it’ll hold the weight of your tomatoes without trouble.
In my experience, bamboo that’s not in contact with soil holds up very well and you can keep in in service for years. However, sections of bamboo embedded in soil may rot away in as little as one season.
The yarn would be my biggest concern. For years, I’ve used some type of synthetic yarn to mark rows in my garden. It doesn’t weather well. After a season, it looks as though it’s holding its shape, but it loses tensile strength; sometimes a day after I stretch it to mark a row it breaks. It’ll be interesting to see whether your lashings become brittle this way… or course, if you’re using woolen yarn, I don’t think you have a problem.
Bottom line: the cages look great. With a limitless supply of bamboo, I’d use it all over my garden. The woodchucks could dine in style!
March 10, 2010 at 4:13 am
soilnsand
Very cool…I’d love to do that..where can I find some cheap bamboo?
March 10, 2010 at 10:56 am
cindyscottday
Keep in mind that last summer was my first as a vegetable gardener. The bamboo tomato cages did hold up and looked beautiful all summer long, but in retrospect, I can’t recommend them. In late September, my 50-some tomato plants finally succumbed to the late blight. I probably only lost about 20 percent of my harvest, but all of those beautiful bamboo tomato cages had to be burned, as the fungus would likely have been buried in the wood and would have come back to infect future gardens. The cheap bamboo came from my neighbor’s garden – it would have been burned earlier in the season anyway. You could grow your own bamboo, but it was a lot of work for one season’s use.
March 24, 2010 at 3:54 am
Bettie
The portion of the bamboo posts that go into the soil could be wrapped in some thick plastic, I suppose.
June 22, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Glenda
What a great idea!
I also have access to bamboo and am starting to make some.
As I’m a novice at growing tomatoes, how far apart are the vertical poles? Looks like the horizontals are at about 12″ and 24″ high?
I found some soldering wire in the house from gazillion years ago. Quite pliable. Going to try that for securing the horizontals to the stakes.
Thanks again!
Glenda
June 24, 2010 at 2:40 am
cindyscottday
My tomatoes are 18 to 24 inches apart from each other. There only are a few inches between individual cages.
August 2, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Lisa Reeder
Over the past 30 years of home gardening, I have tried various ways of staking and caging my tomatoe plants. This year I tried making cages like yours with some left-over bamboo that I had from previous years. I have to say that I have found the perfect solution to caging tomatoes. I will from now on make my cages from bamboo. The bamboo beats anything I have tried before!
July 27, 2011 at 4:31 pm
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February 7, 2012 at 10:06 pm
Keith
There was probably no need to burn your bamboo because of fungus affecting your tomatoes. Bamboo has natural anti-fungal properties and so was most likely unaffected.
February 9, 2012 at 10:38 pm
Bob
Cindyscottday, instead of burning the blight infected bamboo perhaps you can try a solution of bleach and water and let it soak a few days. Even baking soda and dish soap is a good cleaning agent.
Btw, thanks for this blog post. I was browsing the web about how to build tomato cages and this is a great idea.
February 6, 2013 at 3:32 am
bob travis
Wap the end of the bamboo that is in the ground with duct tape. Should last well. Keep your eyes out when driving around Metro Atlanta and you will see stands of bamboo everywhere. most people won’t mind if you take a little but just remember to clean up after yourself.
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December 8, 2013 at 4:01 pm
Glenda Ross
This is not related to gardening, but I found it fascinating that in parts of Asia, they build scaffolding out of bamboo – MANY stories high.
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