Recommendations for plant labels

I bought a big pack of lollipop sticks for labelling my chilli plants. I thought I was being really smart and I didn’t want to use plastic. At the end of the season, I could put them in the compost. I was collecting my first harvest today and realised I wont have to bother composting them - nature has already done that for me. There’s almost nothing left - the section below the soil has gone and the part above has fallen and in some cases also gone. I now have a large bowl of mostly unidentifiable chillies. I still have a list of the dozen or so varieties I started with but most of them are very similar! No worries, I guess we’ll be playing chilli roulette for the next 12 months.

Does anyone have any recommendations for plant labels that aren’t plastic and will last more than a year? One day, I intend to grow bamboo which I think would work a the canes I currently have last a couple of years before the end in the ground starts to decompose.


Chilli Roulette

Instead of labelling each of my plants out in the garden, I make a map of my garden using graph paper and plot all the varieties I plant and sow in the spring for later reference.

Stones, find some nice flat stones and write on them, slate would be perfect if you can get hold of any old roofing tiles. You'll still have the issue with the sun bleaching the writing but you can always put the stones down with the writing down if that is an issue.

I like both ideas and will probably use both as I’m growing in containers. I’ll use numbers on the stones and a map. The dirt (it’s not soil yet) here is only an inch deep and then it’s broken bedrock and river stones, so perfect for writing on.

We've had several threads where people have proposed clever notions.  Here's one of the more recent:

https://permies.com/t/138813/permaculture-upcycling/ungarbage/upcycle-durable-plant-labels

For multi-year durability (fruit trees) I am partial to cutting aluminum labels out of soda cans and scribing on them with a sharp thing, but it's a bit slow for mass production in the vegetable garden.  For that, I will use plastic, specifically cut-up slats from plastic window blinds, marked with sharpie (but they fade too fast) or grease pencil (slightly better).

Thanks for the link Dan. That’s a neat solution for fruit trees. I could easily raid one of my neighbours recycling bins for cans and plastic pots to cut up for labels.

Skandi Rogers wrote:Stones, find some nice flat stones and write on them, slate would be perfect if you can get hold of any old roofing tiles. You'll still have the issue with the sun bleaching the writing but you can always put the stones down with the writing down if that is an issue.

I did this with paint pens on stones.  Worked for about 5 months before the paint pen faded and started to come off.  That fall, I bought some stone carving dremel bits on amazon and the dremel broke before the next season.

Dan Boone wrote:We've had several threads where people have proposed clever notions.  Here's one of the more recent:

https://permies.com/t/138813/permaculture-upcycling/ungarbage/upcycle-durable-plant-labels

For multi-year durability (fruit trees) I am partial to cutting aluminum labels out of soda cans and scribing on them with a sharp thing, but it's a bit slow for mass production in the vegetable garden.  For that, I will use plastic, specifically cut-up slats from plastic window blinds, marked with sharpie (but they fade too fast) or grease pencil (slightly better).

Standard pencil works like a champ, is easily removed if wanted, but stays for years otherwise.  I've ended up with various plastic stakes (basically old window blind type material) from various potting mixes or cell trays I've bought and used those with a graphite drawing pencil for years.

Graphite also works really well if you can get a dark or light enough coloured rock.

Dan Boone wrote:cutting aluminum labels out of soda cans

this works good, easy to write on with a dead ballpoint pen.