Building tomato frame support -- opinions?

[SnootyHen]

I am sick of watching critters (including my own dogs and chickens) destroy my tomatoes so I have this idea based on something I saw at Epcot in Living with the Land pictured here:

Only I don't have a giant greenhouse, year round sunshine or Disney funding. So instead my plan in my little raised garden is a 4' x 4' canopy that is held up by PVC supports sunk in buckets of concrete in the corners of the bed with the tomatoes planted in the middle.

My question is, if I am using PVC for the 4 corner supports, should I make the top out of PVC as well or a wood frame? I am planning to stretch hardware cloth over the frame and it will probably be easier to staple it to wood but thinking the PVC will hold the weight better and be easier to attach to the supports. But how do I attach the HWC to the PVC? .

The corner supports will be like these homemade backstroke flags. Probably smaller buckets since they won't need to be as heavy but that's the concept.

Thoughts?

 

[SheaLoner]

Would it not be easier to just make some type of fence around your 4x4 bed? Only with the overhead trellis I can still see dogs or chickens digging up the roots or breaking a stalk.

 

[SnootyHen]

Would it not be easier to just make some type of fence around your 4x4 bed? Only with the overhead trellis I can still see dogs or chickens digging up the roots or breaking a stalk.

Tried that and between dogs, chickens and voles, they still get in there. So I'm going fence and height this year. The entire garden is much larger but the tomatoes are just 4x4.

 

[SnootyHen]

Here's my finished product. The top frame has 1/2" PVC in the corners that fits into the 2" PVC posts. I also have 2 different sizes of 1.5" PVC that I will use as they grow.

 

[HenriettaPizzaNolan]

Interested to see how this turns out!

 

[SnootyHen]

Interested to see how this turns out!

We've gotten a lot of rain so they are growing really fast! The cherry tomatoes are already well above the frame and probably almost ready to be raised by but the regular plants need a little more growth still. That may be my "fatal flaw" is forgetting that they grow at different rates. The next posts are about 2 feet above dirt level so maybe in a couple more weeks they will all be tall enough to bump up.

 

[SnootyHen]

I took this picture this morning. All the cherry plants are the ones up over the top. The standard ones are barely touching it yet.