The other day after @idyllwild and I finished making our wooden seedling flats I realized that we were going to need labels. We thought about pop-sickle sticks being the obvious solution- cheap, natural and works well.
Then the question became... "where are we going to get them?" Walmart? Amazon? Being in the country now we are learning the value of knowing what you need to buy ahead of time. We had just come back from our trip to the city and the thought of another drive for pop-sickle sticks seemed ridiculous.
Then it occurred to us... we can make them ourselves! We don't need Walmart!
@idyllwild had been making kindling from scrap wood and suggested using that. Perfect!
Since we want thin-ish strips of wood for our labels a knife's blade would be more adept than a hatchet. It was a fun opportunity to teach @idyllwild how to baton with a knife.
We also used the knife to cut them to size, make some crude angles for easy pushing into the soil, and smooth out the area that would be written on.
We could have used power tools to make something a little more refined, or spend more time for perfection but we enjoyed using nothing but a knife to hack together something useful really quick and give us an excuse to get back to our primitive selves and bang on sticks and metal and make a lot of loud noise :)
Haha! As you can see we weren't sticklers for uniformity so we ended up with a variety of sizes. How handy for helping us learn what size we like the best :)
Happy gardening!
I saw this and thought.... yeah! I have to label my plants or I'll forget what they are.
When we moved here in 2016, the previous owner was either a painter... or a hoarder of paint stick stirrers. I found about 50 of them in the shed on a shelf. I bought some stickers at the dollar store and VIOLA! My labels
Brilliant!! You have very nice handwriting :) I love all those herbs!
I just sowed some catnip seeds today that I saved from a friends garden.. I am hoping they are true and didn't cross with another mint.
First of all i really want to appreciate both of your efforts because you both more preferred towards natural creation of home based garden and you both cut the wooden to make them sticks and i hope that the end result will be great and in future we can see full of greenery in this home based garden. Thanks for sharing and keepup the great work. Wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
This is an incredibly kind and thoughtful comment. Thank you @chireerocks :) We are already enjoying using the labels in for our plants... it's fun to slow down and appreciate these things and think about being more sustainable and natural.
Thank you so much and welcome. 🙂
We definitely don't need walmart LOL! Love this idea. It's very accessible for most people and gets us all away from the need to consume to have a garden. Gardening should really be a DIY thing, but it has become an incredible industry!
Thanks for writing this and being so creative. Your post has been resteemed @the-hearth, @mountainjewel's earth-centered creation page. Have a great day!
Very good point... it's a long road to un consumerize myself. You two are definitely doing a great job at that and I look up to you both for how sustainable you are living!
What kind of knife did you use - standard-issue Bowie knife?
And I did notice that you bought the Sharpie marker. :-) [j/k]
LOL good point with the sharpie marker! That would be a tough one to replace with natural materials! Funny enough I got my sharpies used though :)
The knife is a folding Smith and Wesson survival type knife, it seems to stand up to a beating!
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Thank you @sotall!!
I never would have thought about doing something like this. I fully admit I know little about types of wood, even though I have tons of scraps out in the shed. What type of wood were us using because you made it look very easy. I have a bunch of broken pallets that have greyed nicely from being outside. I wonder how easy they would be to cut?
ohh, this post has already been added to the Sotall Directory and will be showcased in Mondays newsletter. That account is out of upvotes right now and will get you before the newsletter posts.
Oh I never heard of Sotall... thanks for letting me know about this. I'll have to check it out and see what it's all about!
I don't know a heck of a lot about wood either, but enough to be dangerous it seems :) I think it is 1x4 or 1x6 and it is pretty soft wood. You could look through your scraps for pieces without knots and that have straight grain and that should work well. If the grain is angled or curved it wouldn't make nice straight pieces. Same goes for your pallet wood.
Wow, they came out so nice!
I love the rustic look of them. ♥
Thank you @squishysquid!
That's a great idea. Thanks for sharing!
What I'm using isn't as natural as yours, but I had a couple old mini-blinds laying in the shed and have been cutting them up to use for plant markers for a couple of years now.
Wow that sounds perfect! Nice and straight and sturdy :) My friend uses yogurt lids ;)
Great tip!! I had to learn the hard way and didn't label anything my second year growing food. I thought I could remember it. lol.😂 Nope. It got kind of confusing and I didn't know what a lot of the plants were until they produced fruit.
I've totally been there and done that many times! LOL Somehow it's easy to convince myself I'll remember all that info.... until about a day later!
Im so bad at labeling. Last year i didn't label my 10 varieties of tomatoes or any of my squash types and I had to wait and see what grew what haha.
Great idea for planting labels :)
Haha! Sounds like you had some fun surprises rediscovering what you planted later on! Thank you @amymya
@theferalone .....we need to do this!
Great idea!
That's a great idea! I might have my son (he cuts our firewood) make me a few! What will you write on them with?
Cool! Splitting tinder is what gave us this idea.. I bet he would bust them out pretty quickly :) We are using a sharpy right now.. it seems to be doing the trick nicely.. hopefully they don't fade too fast.
I cut up a plastic lid whose container got lost. I'd prefer wood, of course, but didn't think simply using a knife to slice down scrap wood would work. Have any more tips about it?
Nice! My friend uses yogurt container lids cut into strips or triangles on sticks like flags. Sure! You'll get best results with wood that has straight grain, not curved or angled... and no knots in the wood. If its straight grains it will be easier to get straight pieces of wood to split off. The thinner you try to cut it, the harder it is, youlll have to play around with the thickness that works for you... sometimes we start thicker and then split it in half and that in half a few times. Find a piece of wood to tap on the back of your knife that is rigid or that you don't care if it gets banged on and don't hit your fingers :) You could use the knife or sandpaper to smooth out the part you'l be writing on. Let me know how it goes!