Best way to label plants?

[User19844666884]

I must just be doing it wrong. What’s the best way to label plants?

I aspire to be one of these amazingly organised people who knows what more than half of the plants in the garden are, and has a diary/calendar for what needs to be done to which plant and when.

To that end, I keep labelling plants so I remember what is where. But it doesn’t work.

I have tried the hard plastic labels that you poke in the ground, plus sharpie. I have tried the soft plastic ones that you attach to the plants, plus “laundry marker”. I have tried some beautiful vintage-looking brass things that you are supposed to “emboss” with a biro, but couldn’t seem to make a mark in them.

What do you use? What works? Extra marks for it looking nice!

I have a Brother garden label maker and I love it!
It's a bit fiddly at first, but once you get used to it it's great.
I buy the flat black plastic label 'sticks' and stick the label I have printed onto them.
Plants I labelled up years ago, are still as good as new.

I have tried the hard plastic labels that you poke in the ground, plus sharpie.
Some lovely MNer (may have been MereDint) told me the answer. You may think that a sharpie is permanent but what you really need is a soft pencil.

Never found the answer. We've got a label machine for the nursery but after working well for a season it's decided it wants to divorce the laptop that carries the software. Sharpies aren't permanent. Black labels with white or silver pens last well and look OK. Also slate labels bought from Etsy or E-bay and written on with white pen are good for display beds. Mostly I don't label as people trample all over the beds, take out the label to read it, then put it back in the wrong place. Or put it in their bag so they can remember the name, or use it to label the cutting they've just nicked.

White plastic labels that you poke in the ground or pot using a pencil.

Pencil is a win/win.

1. it doesn't fade in the garden, but
2. it can be erased easily with a rubber, so you can re-use the stick.

For seedlings/seeds in the greenhouse, I use the reusable sticks from Wilco with soft pencil or even the seed wrapper if I use the whole sachet in a large seed tray, then when I pot them up, I group the pots together and put the stick into the middle pot.

For plants in the garden I can normally recognise them from the leaf shape/ growing habit.

i saw a brilliant idea on YouTube for marking up dahlia tubers when you prepare them in autumn ready for storage. Colour coded florist ribbon, secured round the stem and marked up with the dahlia name + max height (so you always plant the tall ones at the back of the border and graduate forward to the shortest). Use the colours to identify the colour of the flowers (red/pink, mauve/purple, white/cream, lemon/yellow).

I would never have thought to use a pencil! I would have assumed it wouldn’t last more than a couple of weeks. I’ll give it a try.

We do have a label maker somewhere too - I might dig it out

I don’t have Bideshi’s experience of outrageous label-napping in a nursery but I have found that: small labels stuck into the soil will be dug out by cats or foxes and be found years after the plant has died; Sharpies fade after a year or so; slate labels are gorgeous but will snap if you lose your footing in the border and tread on them; there is no white pen on the market (that I’ve found) that will work well on slate; I always think I’ll remember what I’ve planted where, but I won’t.

So I use plastic labels in pots and in the borders I’m sticking in the labels that come from the nursery/supplier, as they’re generally bigger and don’t get pulled out by the wildlife. This is temporary (I tell myself) until I make a detailed plan/record of what’s where.

I chop up plastic milk bottles. We get the 4 pint one so there's masses of plastic. Sharpie. Works brilliantly.

I tried those big lolly sticks with biro, which didn't wash off but the sticks rotted. Didn't even last a year.

I've seen cutting up aluminium cans and embossing them with a metal skewer, but I suspect they'd have very sharp edges.

I wonder if nail varnish on white plastic would work, or if it would flake off?

Lists on thecomputer of what I’ve got and where they are

I use labels for pots, there are too many cats and other animals rampaging through the garden for anything in the soil to stay in place.

… or even with a damp soil covered finger

For plants in borders, I save all the labels from the pots, and all the seed packets that I've sown from and just get to know them all well. I rarely label anything in a border.

For veg, I only label that which I am going to save seeds of, which is mainly tomatoes so I made labels with a laminator and write on them with chalk pen, and tie them to the string/support so that I know what it is months later when I decide whether to save from them or not. Because I save all seed packets, if I decide later to save from them I can dig back and find out what they are.

And I label all pots as they grow with chalk pen on the side of the pot.

WhenI started gardening, toothpaste still came in metal tubes. You could cut them into plant label shapes, and write on them with pencil or wooden skewer, which would indent the letters into the label - that really was permanent! Some medications still come in metal tubes

I’m going to run an experiment. I now have some marked with plastic stick and label maker, some with plastic stick and pencil, and I’m going to try to source some kind of soft metal to emboss. Let’s see what works best!

You can buys sheets of embossing metal in art shops

https://www.jacksonsart.com/cwr-aluminium-copper-set-12-sheets-15x30-cm?channable=0044a56964003630303837d0&store=jacksonsarten&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4vS3MTqwIVV-Z3Ch1aZgFsEAQYBSABEgLUDvDDBwE

Citizen science in action!
Do report back and tell us the results.

I use wooden lolly stick type ones. They go fluffy pretty quickly in damp conditions and break apart. Not what you are asking for I know, but means I know what they are when things are small and no plastic waste in the ground for many years to come. Unless your plants are particularly unusual then mulch and cut things back in autumn pretty much covers what is needed. I sometimes chuck some seaweed feed in a watering can, but with no real schedule.