Ducks4you for 2022

[digitS']

You might find this at your garden center LINK. The ink will survive the summer sun.

Yes, I found it tedious to use a map ... especially in the distant garden that requires a road trip.

LINK

It does provide an historical record, however.

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

I wanted to talk about plant labeling.

I'm OK talking about my failures, I'll get to those. But first, why are you labeling them? I don't need to label beets and carrots so I can tell them apart when they start growing but I mark where I put the seeds so I can tell where not to plant something else until they come up. That can just be a stick in the ground but I often write variety on the stake just because I can.

I plant corn in succession, a new plot every two weeks or so to get pretty continuous production throughout the season. I put a stake with the date on it so I can tell at a glance when I planted and when the next planting is due. I need the date to last a few weeks only.

With my network beans I want to know which variety on the spot during the entire season. I have a map of what went where but when I'm taking notes during the growing season and the way I harvest them I want to know what is what. It suits my personality better.

One year with my tomatoes, I cut strips of plastic chicken feed bags and wrote the tomato variety on the white side of those with a black Sharpie, then tied them to the top of my cow panel trellis. The thought was that they'd be up where I could see them and the flapping in the wind might scare birds away. It did not work with the birds, I don't know if that's because the wind was not always blowing or they soon learned what they don't need to be scared of. By the end of the season I could not read what was on most of them, though I had it memorized by then. I tried tying them on with string and then wire. I'd find them scattered in the garden after a wind blew them off, either they became untied or ripped off the string or wire. I generally do not recommend this method.

To make my stakes I cut an 8' long 2x4 into 2' lengths, then rip those on my table saw to maybe 3/8" to 1/2" thick. I use treated wood so they last longer. First I tried writing on those with a black Sharpie, it worked OK but could fade by the end of the season. And the bare wood was sometimes hard to find among the vegetation. So I started spray painting them with a light color to make them easier to find. The black Sharpie was easier to read on those bright light paint colors but could still fade by the end of the season. I think that's the sun more than anything else. If I write the variety on both sides of that stake one side seems to remain readable.

I tried using ink instead of the Sharpie. That also faded. I have not tried using black paint, that would not be much harder to write on than the ink (a small craft paint brush) but a bottle of ink doesn't need to be stirred or shaken and is easier to seal do it doesn't dry out. I think I could find a paint that would work. Maybe.

I tried putting a coat of clear marine urethane over the label, thinking it would protect it from fading. Nope, it doesn't. If it gets very thick when you apply it the Sharpie label will run and smear so it's more labor intense if you spray on a few layers to stop it from smearing. With all my bean segregations most labels are not reusable, I need to rewrite them. I use my sander to take off the old label and repaint them. If I just try to paint over the old label it still shows through, even with two or sometimes three layers. That urethane gums up the sandpaper. If I sand off the urethane I'm constantly changing out sandpaper. I don't use urethane anymore. It did not work anyway.

My current method is to rip new stakes if I need them (I usually don't), sand off the old labels and repaint, then write on them with a black Sharpie on both sides. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, lots of flaws. Would it work if you want to reuse labels? With a little work probably. I think you'd need to clean them off then trace the labels new every year.

If you use treated wood I'm sure you cannot claim to be organic. I don't claim to be. If you paint the entire stake I don't think you need to use treated wood, it should last through several years. But can you still claim to be organic if you use painted wood? I don't know, I don't know the organic rules that well. I'll paraphrase what someone on here said many years ago. With me, organic is more a state of mind than a rigid set or rules. With my state of mind I'm OK with treated or painted wood used in this manner. I may someday be certified but it will not be certified organic.

 

[flowerbug]

The painted wooden stakes sound nice! I've also heard that a plain #2 pencil or carpenter's pencil works well, along with recommendations for grease pencils (aka China marker).

This year I'm trying grease pencil on Tyvek labels for particular* labeling. The labels do come in different colors, and I thought to use color-coding in some manner but haven't figured that out yet.

I may try grease pencil on reclaimed plastic (yogurt container lids) for general labeling in the garden, although mostly I rely on a garden map. I'm finding the map tedious though when I'm in the garden admiring the young pea plants and trying to figure out which one I'm looking at.

*I have some seed saving projects that involve identification of each plant and what it produces. The Tyvek tags are being numbered so that they can be used year after year.

grease pencil sounds really workable compared to some other options. thanks for the reminder.

 

[flowerbug]

You might find this at your garden center LINK. The ink will survive the summer sun.

Yes, I found it tedious to use a map ... especially in the distant garden that requires a road trip.

LINK

It does provide an historical record, however.

Steve

while i did laugh a lot when listening and watching bits of Schitt's Creek i don't think that link was what you intended there @digitS'... ? oh, ok, now i see what you mean, but your first link was empty?

 

[digitS']

Here it is:

LINK

yEs I hAd ToO mUcH fUn ThInKiNg AbOuT tHaT cOmMeRcIaL aNd MaPs .

 

[flowerbug]

Here it is:

LINK

yEs I hAd ToO mUcH fUn ThInKiNg AbOuT tHaT cOmMeRcIaL aNd MaPs .

haha! have you watched the whole series? i haven't seen all of it but there's a ton of laughs in there. Mom has watched it two or three times by now and i'm sure she'll get it again sometime.

 

[Zeedman]

Back, aGAIN, hopefully Last day of house sitting. I wanted to talk about plant labeling. I have learned that Sharpies are not the best to use for labels. I never knew that they could fade outside. I think the sun gets to them, And nobody has invented sunscreen for a Sharpie.
Some gardeners swear that cutting up milk jugs into strips and labeling those with a common pencil works the best.
I happen to admire small and painted wooden stakes and wooden signs the best.
One year I happened to have some red spray paint and I coated purchased plant labels/stakes with the red, to label the hot peppers, as opposed to sweet ones.
As it turns out, I now have NOT problem telling them apart, so I don't need to do this anymore.
I think some kind of color coding could work in my garden.
Thoughts?

You can cut strips of aluminum cans almost as easily, and once straightened, they make durable plant tags. When you write on them with a pen, the pressure embosses the writing into the metal... and that embossing will outlast the ink. The tag can be tacked or stapled to a wooden stake, or tied over whatever cage, trellis, or row marker is nearby. SSE uses aluminum tags in their fields, wired to fiberglass stakes, or tied to the T-posts that support their trellises. Those aluminum tags can even be stored with the seeds, to be re-used when those seeds are replanted (but round off any sharp edges). I've been considering doing something similar with thin copper, which would also make a good long-lasting label for trees & perennials.

Up until now, I've seldom used tags except when starting transplants. For those, I use cheap plastic plant stakes & sharpies. Fading is not a serious issue for such a short time - and I can quickly erase the sharpie using alcohol & a rubber eraser, to clear the tag for re-use. Rather than writing the variety name (some of which are too long for that anyway) I use a numbering system for the labels, using a letter for the family followed by a sequential number... 'S1, S2, S3...' for Solanaceae, 'L!, L2, L3...' for legumes (although I should use 'F' for Fabaceae), etc.

To keep track of what went where, I use a combination of maps and data collection forms. All the garden locations are numbered, with the larger gardens divided into smaller numbered plots. The variety name, location, and transplant number if applicable (see above) are recorded on both documents; so if one or the other is lost, everything can still be identified. The maps are set aside after planting, and only the data collection sheets carried into the gardens for most of the summer. I learned on a windy day some years back not to keep both documents in the same place. Fortunately I was able to chase everything down that year. If all else fails, I also have my planning worksheets to fall back on, since those are used to create the data forms.

The form tracks dates, germination rates, flower color, and seed lots, among other things. It was originally created in WordPerfect, and the program & all documents were lost in a hard drive crash about 15 years ago. Fortunately I had saved good copies in a master document folder (something us old timers did before there were cloud backups) and have been burning copies ever since. It has proven to be versatile. This was a page from last year:

 

[ducks4you]

Burned more boxes yesterday. File STILL going.

 

[ducks4you]

Been busy. Tilled around the old fencing by the street yesterday. FINALLY I am on a mini vacation from cleaning stalls!! It's been warm and dry, so ponies don't need an indoor dry place for their "feets."
Meanwhile, their beds are clean and prepped and water bowls and sweet feed full. Tonight OR tomorrow I will put them in again, then it will be hit and miss until summer.
ALSO, I finally pruned my fruit trees and my magnolia. The magnolia has two thick branches touching each other, but I will pick from one of those to cut next winter, since a took off a good amount already.
I was disappointed that 1/2 way up one branch on my peach tree, there was evidence of some mushroom growth, and I had to cut about 10 inches below that and remove it. Gonna die anyway.
I really hacked the old and dying apple tree and the pear tree which had numerous watershoots. I took it seriously that we don't cut eNOUGH when we prune.
I really waited until the last minute for this, but we had freezing morning temperatures this weekend after I pruned. Guess we'll find out if it helped or hurted.

 

[ducks4you]

I had to wait 30 minutes for it, but Farm and Fleet couldn't find large Seresto flea collars in their warehouse that were still in their system. I was able to pay for a rain check, and I got a $20.00 gift card for each of the two that I bought. Dunno when they will get them in. Sales do that to inventory and their staff is short.
I am thinking of ordering them online in the future.