I then transplanted the little seedlings into plastic cups and started hardening them off outside. I also used the plastic milk jug strips to make labels for each individual plant.

Three weeks into the hardening off process, I'm realizing that many of the labels I wrote have faded to....nothing. And these all seem to be the plants with the least distinctly shaped leaves.

What are some other ideas for long-lasting plant labels without spending a lot of money?

--Valerie

Someone on another forum suggested using printed labels from a p-Touch label writer. I have one, but no tape at the moment, otherwise, I'd be trying this too.

This might not be the solution for the over 50 crowd or those who want to be able to read their label at a glance, but I've been pleased at long lived frugality of this method.

Chervil2

Then one day while driving home, I found a box that fell off of someone's truck, which had about 500 paint stirring sticks inside it, those make great markers too.

You know how people are always putting up illegal signs on the right-of-way? Well, in our neighborhood we've started pulling them up and throwing them away, and I've accumulated quite a few of them in my basement. So the night before our last plant trade, I was frantically looking for something to make labels with, and I noticed these plastic, definitely waterproof, signs. A lot of them are hand-written, so I figured I could cut them up and write my label information on the back side where nothing had already been written. Well, it worked like a charm! I used a magic marker and they dried immediately and were smear-proof once dry. The material is double-walled so small pieces of it are stiff enough to poke down into the pot.

These things are plentiful. Some nights I pull up 10 or more. It's against the law for people to put them in the right of way, so it would be difficult for someone to complain that it disappeared. (Sort of like a drug dealer complaining that someone stole his drugs, I imagine). One small sign easily yielded 20 or more large plant tags.

I borrowed another idea for plant labels, that are more attractive, from an exhibitor at the Southeastern Flower Show a few months ago. She had made plant labels out of split saplings, writing the plant name on the inside, cut surface, and leaving the bark on the other side for appearance's sake. They looked very nice, but I'm not that good with a knife, so I copied the same idea but instead used split-apart pieces of bamboo that were no longer usable for trellis. The inside surface took the ink from a waterproof marker well, and they seem to be holding up fine outdoors. They blend in and look much more natural than plastic.

What are they advertising?

This seems to be a big advertising trend, at least here in Atlanta. I once followed a pickup truck around my neighborhood, knocking the signs down as fast as they tacked them up. Got into a "discussion" with the person posting them, who told me he was just being paid to keep plenty of the signs up on certain streets, and it didn't matter how many I knocked down - he'd just be paid more to put more back up. I called the phone number on the signs he was posting, and said I wanted to sell them my house, where could we meet and what was their business name? They wouldn't give me a name, so I told them if they put one more sign on the corner in front of my house I was calling the police, and I told them what corner it was. Oddly, not a single sign has gone up there since. Maybe one company is responsible for posting everyone's signs? Who knows.

Some of the signs are advertising things for sale. On one particular busy corner near my house, I removed the same sign several times a week for several months before the poster finally gave up. It was advertising cars and trucks for sale for $2,500 by calling a particular phone number. Who knows what kind of scam that one was. But whoever was doing it spent a lot of money on the signs. They were large, and attached to a very sturdy metal prong structure to be pushed into the ground. It was after I got a few of these that I started keeping them in the basement rather than throwing them away, because I thought we might actually want to re-face the signs someday and use those really strong bases for our own purpose - to announce neighborhood meetings, for instance. It has also occurred to me that someday I might figure out a garden use for these metal supports. They're too short for trellises, but some of the thinner, more flexible kinds of metal sign supports (These are shaped like an upside-down U, and slide down through the channels in the double-sided sign material, with the ends then poked into the ground) are useful for pinning down tomato cages.

I think you could probably buy the signs blank, if you don't have this kind of pollution in your neighborhood (lucky you, if so!!). Lots of times the signs will actually be advertising signs! and it's usually about 100 signs for $99, so I figure you can get them somewhere for about a dollar apiece. Maybe a printing shop? Kinko's copy center? But why spend money for them when they're available at every interstate exit ramp, and you'd be performing a public service by cleaning a few of them up?

Now that you mention it, I've seen a few of those kinds of signs on corners that have empty lots. "Make hundreds of $ per day!" "We buy old cars!" They don't appear to be as strong as the ones you're finding.

But I've never seen them on people's front yards!

Maybe your state attorney general's office would be interested in this. They'd have more resources for figuring out who it is. I once reported a bad online gardening vendor to their state's attorney general office, and they got involved and got me my money back!!

Meanwhile I've been trying to undo the damage from all of the labels that faded into nothing. I have a bunch of seedlings labelled "mystery" because I have no idea what they are.

--Valerie

Now if I could just keep the chipmunks from stealing them! lol
This year, I will place small plant pots or small rocks over/around them.

Humph.

The ones made of popsicle sticks and ball-point pen seem to have weathered just fine, though.

How about these...?

Click the link below to see how to make long lasting aluminum tags. My Flicker photo.

Karyl