Here you can see the stakes that I am trying for the first time this year with my tomato plants. I have always used cages in the past, and they do work well, but if they are proper cages they take up a great deal of room in my small garden, and if they are not proper cages, then they are too short and weak to be of much use. So this year I am going to try staking the tomatoes as an alternative. Currently the plants are small enough to be difficult to see in given the abundance of parsley, but they are growing fast so I will need to get to tying them up soon, probably within a week or so.