Hi Doug

I am glad to hear that you are keeping busy with the garden and the harvest....

Tom gave me few years ago a huge box of wooden ice cream sticks and I still have them for garden labels in the beds and containers, Mark made those long lasting plastic labels that I still have them for the pots. When I give the tomatoes to the community garden, I just write in the cups with a permanent marker. I also have paint markers to write on the lid of the preserves jars when I make them.

Silvia

I am going to try something this year that I learned from a woodworking show. The woodworker was 'antiquing' his work by finding images of old labels online and mirror-imaging them in an editor so that everything was backwards. He would then print the image with his inkjet printer using label paper with all the labels removed. The ink would be applied to the backing instead and since the backing isn't porous, the ink stays wet. He would carefully take this wet inked image and lay it on the wood and apply weight while the ink soaked into the wood. In the videos the images always looked fairly crisp, so I figure if I use a large enough font, I can use this same process to create almost Botanic Garden level placards for some of my plants. After the ink dries for a day, I will coat the placards with a clear laquer which should protect the ink from rain. If the laquer alone doesn't work, I will try covering the image with plexiglass.

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The ink would be applied to the backing instead and since the backing isn't porous, the ink stays wet.

He must have a different brand of inkjet than I do. I always put labels in upside down (you'd think by now I would remember which way a single sheet feeds) and they're totally dry once they come out of the printer, even printed on the backing.

Not the back of the sheet, but the olatic or wax coated side that the labels would normally be attached to. He pulled all the labels and surrounding material off and then printed.

I just print a page of labels at the largest font, cut them into strips and cover both sides with a strip of clear packing tape. This makes them waterproof and they last a long time.

Hmm. I tried that once with my canon i9100 to see if I could print labels one at a time and it just completely smeared the olatic coating area when pushing the paper out. I guess it depends on the printer.

I like shuffles's idea.

Call me old-fashioned, but I still use the slats from old blinds. They're the perfect size for my trays of seedlings and I use them to put the dates on cuttings every time I stick some (which is almost daily). And they are free, so I can label everything that goes to friends and neighbors.

Of course, they wouldn't do for Doug's pickle experiments, but they work great in the garden.

Anybody want some?

Susie

Susie, don't feel bad. I do too. Then I paint over the names with clear nail polish to keep them from rubbing off and fading. Cheap and easy.