Cheap way to make plant labels?

foreign_correspondent

Last year I used plastic strips from packaging, and found all my writing dissapeared, which was a bit of a !!!!!! - so I bought 1000 white plastic pot labels off ebay for £12, or just over 1p each.

katholicos

I love the idea of recycling something to make them but i have to admit that today in B & M i bought some. They were on the 2 packs for £1.50 stand and there are 50 in a pack. The pack even included a pencil.

katholicos

rosie383 wrote: »

I love the idea of using old CDs. I am going to hunt all the unused ones and can just imagine them shining away in the lottie!

I believe that the reflective light from the cd's are believed to put birds off as well, so they are probably ideal for using where growing stuff.

ShauntheSheep

My garden is full of large pebbles so I write on those with a permanent marker. The added advantage is that the foxes don't chew them as they do plastic labels.

balloo_2

I had a load of milk bottles ready to cut but the bl--dy milkman chased me for half a mile before I dumped them just kidding guys

rosie383

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

zarazara

Thanks for this thread and all the replies. I was only wondering this morning about what to do for plant labels.

meg72

foxgloves wrote: »

I make all mine from old marge/soft cheese tubs and they are fine. I've also used lolly sticks, plastic cutlery ( I hate the waste of just chucking perfectly good stuff away) and old CDs. They wouldn't be to everyone's taste, but I write the name of the veg on them in thick marker pen then just stick them in the soil at the end of the row. I think they look quite funky, personally. A nice idea I once saw in a magazine (I haven't tried it as I live so far away from the sea!) was collecting the long razor shells and writing the plant names on those. They did look really nice & I guess they'd biodegrade & put some useful minerals into the soil too.

Definitely second the old CDs. Have some still in use after 5 years, just used a CD marker. This has the added advantage of keeping the birds (in my case Pigeons) off the beans and peas. and strawberrys They dont like the reflections aparently.

All the other suggestions are great too. I have never actually paid for plant markers although they do seem quite cheap now. I just cant resist using something I already have that didnt cost me anything.

foxgloves

Yes, we do find that CD plant labels twinkling among the rows of veg seems to deter woodpigeons. I wish I'd been using CDs the year that a woodpigeon ate the 52 baby turnip plants overnight that I'd just spent ages painstakingly planting out!! Managed to get quite a few supplies from work....just old CDroms & stuff that had been binned as no longer current info, but great for row markers, labels & hanging bird-scarers.