88am66o5a
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Cucumber Vines Outgrown Tomato Cages

What suggestions are available when your cucumbers leaves are the size of elephant ear plants and have outgrown the tomatoe cages.

Do I add another tomato cage on top or what?

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applestar
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Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

If you are trying to grow them on vertical trellis, you do need trellis height at least as tall as you are and I think tomato cages would be inadequate unless you add some tall stakes to keep them from falling over… and by the time you do that, maybe you might want to just use more tall stakes?

Here are a couple of photo collages from my veg garden progress thread. Image Image
There are more if interested.

I’m trying out Japanese cucumber pruning techniques this year. You stick to just the main vine and a couple of “power vine” side shoots, and the rest are snipped after one or two fruits. This saves a lot of space and avoids tangled mess of vines going everywhere, while maximizing productivity. I started a thread about it here —
Specific pruning and training techniques - HelpfulGardener.com

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digitS'
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Location: ID/WA! border

Tomato plants at the foot of my backsteps are in those cheap, short cages.

They are in their pots with 3 stakes (1" x 2") that are about 7' long. As the plants outgrow the cages, twine is wrapped around the stakes about every 8-10".

Do I need the cages? Not really but they help to contain the plants. Even on windy days, the arrangement has lots of stability.

Steve



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