Monday, March 12, 2007

Plant Labels Hack


I was in the greenhouse of a local garden center and came across these plant labels from Ferry Morse the other day. The price is pretty steep when you consider that they're just thin pieces of plastic and you could easily make your own plant labels to keep track of your growing houseplant collection or the seeds you start making mini greenhouses out of used soda bottles. You can make something similar and just as useful by cutting the tops and bottoms off of your gallons of milk or soda bottles and cutting the sides into strips.

If you have kids around then you probably buy a lot of Popsicles and throw away a lot of the wooden sticks. Rinse the sticks off and set them aside to dry and then you can use them as plant labels. Or you could buy a bag of the wooden sticks in crafts stores or dollar stores in your area. A local dollar store sell them 100 sticks for a dollar which is a lot cheaper than these cost.

Don't throw away your mini-blinds as they can also be cut up into strips and be used as plant labels. One mini-blind can produce hundreds of plant labels that could last you for a very long time. If you aren't redecorating your home check out any junk shops or garage sales near you for used mini-blinds, they can easily be cleaned and serve a purpose in your garden instead of taking up space in landfills.

6 comments:

kate said...

I hadn't thought about using blinds for plant markers. THat is a great idea.

Thank you!!

MrBrownThumb said...

Hi Kate,

No problem if you think of any other things that can be used as plant markers do let me know.

Anonymous said...

Great idea! Another idea I'd seen is using large "brook stones" - the smooth oblong variety and using sharpie permanent markers on them. They last about a season, then you need to "refresh" them by redrawing on them again. btw, I linked this on my site - hope you don't mind. If you do, let me know.

Andrew

MrBrownThumb said...

Hi Andrew,

You're the same Andrew that registered my blog's name as a dot com and you're blogging with the same theme I am doing here, right?

No I don't mind if you linked to my Garden Hacker blog it's cool with me.

Good idea with the stones. If you use the unfinished stones you can get patio paints at craft store and paint the name on the stone which will last longer than the sharpie. It will last even longer if you seal it.

Anonymous said...

Hi, yes - that's me. Didn't realize you were on blogspot with the same name. Hard to find relative domain names now! Love your brownthumbs site too. I'm a little new to the "thingamablog" blogger, but will try to keep a link to your blogs prominently on my site. Happy Holidays!

MrBrownThumb said...

Yeah I know what you mean about coming up with interesting names. It took me a while to come up with the name I use as my name for my main blog, and when I started the Garden Hacker blog it took me a while to come up with it. Then I Google around to make sure someone else hadn't already thought of it.

Anyway thanks for stopping by.

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