I can only mention my own experience with CRW cages and I've made my own in the way past and never attributed anything to those cages damaging fruits and when I moved to this new area in 1999 I used some really rusty cages at one of the places I was using up here and again, never saw any damage from those cages.

Sometimes fruits would be up against one of the wires and it would cause a physical dent in those fruits, but never any black spots from rubbing against the wires with fruits or stems.

At some areas here where I am now I grew most of my tomatoes by sprawling and a lesser number by caging, the rusty ones, actually, that belonged to the person whose garden area I was using.

Carolyn

Maybe b/c we got over 2" of rain b/t Friday and Mon?

I have a few of my parents' very old and rusty, short, wide ring cages which I use for short varieties. I think I've seen a few cases where a tomato presses against the ring and there is an indentation (not an actual hole), sometimes dark. I always assumed the sun heated the metal and it burned the skin of the tomato. No idea if that's what actually happened.

Missing, I mentioned the physical denting, which is what I called it, in my post above and no, I don't think it was b'c the metal got hot and did it. It's just a physical thing when the fruits enlarge and just happen to be next to some wires of the cage so get pressed against it.

It has happened for me when growing tomatoes in standard tall CRW cages as well as the short spiral ones, which I've used for quite a few years now since I have to grow my tomatoes only in the backyard in 12 gal Gro-bags and have Freda put the short spiral ones in the gro-bags to get a bit more height to the plants before they flop over.

Carolyn