My wife loves to garden. It seems that every year, she tries new techniques for staking her tomatoes and other climbing plants. A couple of years ago, she saw the movie, It's Complicated, starring Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. If you haven't seen the movie, Meryl Streep plays a divorcee who has an amazing country home with an incredible garden. Of course, the garden was constructed over a series of weeks specifically for the movie set and would be nearly impossible for one person to create and maintain while at the same time also running her own bakery business while being a single mother of three children, but let's not let that get in the way of a good story.

Cutting to the chase (movie lingo), in this garden she had these very simple wooden tomato cages that were built a lot like a four-post teepee with cross struts and a single vertical stabilizer bar between the struts on each side of the cage. Well, my beloved bride, the gardener, politely asked me if I could build some of these cages for this year's tomatoes, which in wife-speak translates to "go build some of those cages because I'm planting tomatoes today."

Truth be told, I thought they turned out well enough that I should share the idea with my woodworking readers in the event that they too had a need for such a garden project. The following steps are all quite simple, using only a miter saw, a cordless drill, a hammer and five 8-foot long strips of 1x2 SPF lumber, which cost about a buck a piece at your local home center. You could use a circular saw to make the cuts, but a miter saw would be a safer alternative if you have one available.

Begin by using a tape measure to measure 72-inches in length on four of the 1x2 boards, then cut them using the miter saw.

Keep the 24-inch cutoffs, as you'll need them in a few minutes. Next, cut one end of each of the four 6-foot posts to a point to make the posts easier to drive into the ground. I chose to cut a 60-degree angle on each side of the post from edge to center, which made driving the posts a breeze.

Clear enough space in your garden around each tomato plant to outline a 16-inch by 16-inch square in the dirt. Place the tip of one of the four stakes at one corner of this dirt square and tilt the stake toward the center of the square, over the tomato plant. Hammer the stake about 8-inches into the ground. Repeat with the other three stakes until all four are even and grouped together at the top of the teepee. Attach the four stakes at the top with some wood screws. I screwed two opposite stakes together with one screw, then attached the two remaining stake heads to the already joined grouping.

This teepee would be stable enough to support your tomato plants, but now you need to create some struts to give them something to grab onto as they climb. cut four sections of 1x2 on edge using a 45-degree miter cut on each end, with the length at 13-inches, short point to short point. By attaching the four mitered corners together using a mitered butt joint with a single wood screw through each joint, you now have a wooden square for support.

(NOTE: If you don't have a miter saw, you could use a regular butt joint to create each corner of the square, but the mitered butt joint will look a bit cleaner.)

Create a second square using the same technique, except with the short point to short point length of 8-inches. Take these two squares out to the garden and slip them over the top of the teepee, and you'll find that the larger square stops about a foot above ground level and the smaller square will be about three feet above the ground. Adjust the two squares by hand so that they are even and level with the ground.

Measure the distance between the top of the upper square brace and the bottom of the lower square brace. This distance should be consistent across the four sides. Cut four pieces of 1x2 board to this length, then attach these strips vertically between the two square braces to provide additional support for your tomato plants, which will be helpful, particularly when they're early in their development.

Your finished tomato cage should look much like the one in the photo above (well, maybe without the lake in the background). These are inexpensive and easy to build, and should be able to be used for a few years before the wood deteriorates to the point that it needs to be replaced.