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Friday Favorite: Plant Tags

July 11th, 2014

This past week I visited a local public garden, it’s a small facility, so I was surprised when most of the plants were labeled.  I love a place that has plant tags because I always want to know varieties.  In my photos you will find both photos of the plant and the tags.
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I would love to add tags to my garden but I’m not sure exactly which method I would use. For right now I keep track with photos, but it would definitely be nice to have things labeled since I get a decent number of visitors. Tagging plants is both an investment in time and money though and I’m not sure if I want to dedicate any of my gardening time to that right now. Perhaps that’s a good future project, something to tackle during one of our long Maine winters.

Do you have any plants tagged in your garden?

6 Comments to “Friday Favorite: Plant Tags”
  1. Marina on July 11, 2014 at 6:22 am

    I don’t and really it is because the few tags I have tried are not permanent. I am ticking an embossing machine for metal tags might have to be the way.
    I wonder how fade resistant the labels in that garden are?
    Yes, long winters have their benefits. Without them, we would never get anything done in the house!

    Reply to Marina's comment

  2. Nebraska Dave on July 11, 2014 at 8:13 am

    Susy, nope there are no tags in any of my flower or garden beds. I’m no where near a garden for tour yet. This year has been a garden mess and is barely surviving with some of the hardy plants. Surprisingly the eggplant is doing well. They are more durable than I thought.

    My best experience with tagging plants was when I attended a blue grass festival in North Carolina some years back. The setting was on a well kept but woodsy community college campus nestled in the green lush hills of North Carolina. As one walked along the rock lined woodchip covered paths from one entertainment stage to another plants were labeled with tags. Many were just native to the area. I decided to sit on a bench by one of the plants just to watch the reaction of the passers by. As the folks strolled along leisurely reading the tags, they would nod their head in understanding and move on to the next one. The tags were small and some times one had to bend over and get closer to really see what it said. This plant would make people straighten up, backup, and walk away quickly. It was labeled “Poison Ivy”. It did look like Poison Ivy but I had to wonder because I never saw poison ivy grow on the ground as a cover. In Nebraska it climbs up trees. I have a natural immunity to poison ivy and never have had the pleasure to experience its effects even though I’ve actually bare handed pulled it off a tree and dug it out of the ground during a backyard cleanup.

    Have a fun day tagging your plants.

    Reply to Nebraska Dave's comment

  3. Henry on July 11, 2014 at 9:18 am

    As a christmas gift last year the kids and I made Copper Tags to label all of the fruit trees, rasberry trellis’ and berry bushes. We cut copper out in the shape of leaves or apples and then stamped the name of the variety into the copper. We punched a hole and used a leather thong to attach the label to the tree.
    Our flower gardens on the other hand lack labels, and often we get varieties from friends that we are not sure of the variety on, all we know is oh those are the irises that we got from so and so.
    In the future I would love to do better at the labeling thing.

    Reply to Henry's comment

  4. Misti on July 11, 2014 at 10:23 am

    We usually put the tags that came with the plant next to the plant—ugly, yes, but it helps us remember odd plants we get.

    We have used metal tags before and put label machine tape on them to label them—doesn’t last that long. I think eventually we’ll try to find non-rusting tags and emboss them, particularly on our trees and shrubs.

    Reply to Misti's comment

  5. KimH on July 12, 2014 at 10:19 pm

    Im a tag lover too.. and the only plants in my gardens that are tagged are my garlics, because I have so many different varieties of them..
    I think I got them on Amazon.. nice looking metal tags that you write on that doesnt fade away.. they’re about 4 years old now and still going strong.

    Reply to KimH's comment

  6. Jennifer Fisk on July 14, 2014 at 1:41 pm

    The only thing that is remotely close to tagging is putting the initials of my tomato variety on the wooden stake. Of course then I forget what the initial stands for.

    Reply to Jennifer Fisk's comment

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This is a daily journal of my efforts to cultivate a more simple life, through local eating, gardening and so many other things. We used to live in a small suburban neighborhood Ohio but moved to 153 acres in Liberty, Maine in 2012.

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