Good Long term labeling

Pam - Sounds like you're having a green spring with your seed-starting. I missed green in NYC. Not enough green for me in the city, even Chicago. Chicago in March is the pits.

I need to get some seeds started! Brought some shelves home from Mom's old house so have plenty of space. It's just getting it done.

KayJones,

>> Magic Eraser is excellent to rough up a mini blind label.

Thank you! I never heard of that but will try it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melamine_foam

Someone told me that I could REMOVE pencil marks by just scrubbing vigourously with "green scrubbing pads", but for me that only lightened the pencil marks, I still had to use a pink rubber eraser to get the last off.

maybe "Mr. Clean" Magic Eraser will reomve all the old marks, and abrade it well for next year's marks!

>> when written in pencil, then covered with clear nail polish, they last a couple of years for me.

Cool! I had heard about spraying with a clear varnish, but never bought any. Nail polish sounds less messy!

I don;t think I've had any fade toi illegibility on me, and some have been outside for at least two years. if UV is a factir, we don;t have strong sun! I'm almost at the Canadian border, fairly far North.

Dean - I do splurge on the white labels as well. Don't have miniblinds so that's not a source for me and I have to constantly edit all the stuff I collect for propagating in the name of recycling. As long as I can reuse the white labels, I hold on to them. Still experimenting with the Sharpie industrial strength pen but it's only been a month or two so no conclusions to be drawn yet.

Cindy--

You can buy a whole mini-blind for under $5. Cut away!

That would be many year's supply of labels.

Gita

Good luck Cindy. Thanks Citigal!

I re-use the commercial white plastic labels by erasing the pencil, either with a pencil eraser or with fine sandpaper. I have many labels that have been refurbished and reused for as long as 7 years now. The sandpaper erasing technique has the added benefit of making the white plastic have more "tooth" to accept pencil marks better.

Zen, that's a great idea on the sandpaper. I think I'll try that whenever I trade plants. I certainly have a bucket full of white tags from buying new plants! For my own hostas, I'm going to have a go at painting river rocks with their names. That way, I can find them in the spring before they emerge =) Plastic and even wire labels don't work in my garden due to a horde of pernicious squirrels.

I used to label everything with those fancy zinc/wire labels but would curse myself every fall/spring when cleaning up leaves. Many have ended up in a compost pile. Now I only label when seed-starting or keeping tomatoes correctly id'd in the summer. Wonder if a Mr. Clean sponge would work as well as sandpaper.

I'm slowly switching to the plastic labels that are easily written on with pencil. Last fall i put dozens around after moving and dividing at least that many plants.
This spring they were all still perfectly legible -luckily, since some beauties have not yet condescended to show themselves, and could have been damaged without the trusty marker to protect their location. I also found a few from over a year ago, also still clear. To re-use, I erase them and rinse the dirt off.

This year I also bought paint pens, which I've been using on some I bought by mistake that are too smooth for pencil. I'm not sure yet how that will work out.

Pam

Pam - did the paint pens have a fine enough tip for writing on small labels? I hadn't purchased any yet and was curious.

Since I work at a HD---the Blinds Dept. saves me a lot of the ends they cut off
when trimming the blinds.
This is especially good when they trim off about 18" from the length of a vertical blind.
SOOO many pieces! A nice, mundane chore cutting these up as I watch TV.

Mini blinds are already the perfect width. Just cut and shape and you are done.

Gita

They come in different point sizes. I got the fine one, and it seems just like a regular sharpie. I haven't had any trouble writing clearly, but it's definitely thicker than a ball-point pen.

Thanks, Pam. Good to know. I did try a grease pencil of sorts, recommended by a gardening mail order company but the point is too broad to write legibly on small labels.

A china pencil and a grease pencil are the same thing. They work great and they are inexpensive. I also use T labels. Any other plastic labels it brittle too fast and creak.

Rhapsody - do you "sharpen" the point of the grease pencil?

CindyMzone5-
No. The grease pencils I use have a fairly fine tip!

Ohhhh. The one I have is "mechanical". Maybe I can rub it to a point before using it. Or look for one next time I go to the hobby store.

YES! The hobby store, a home improvement store, a office supple store. They all should have it! Comes in lots of colors... I buy black, white, green and red pencils!

Heading over to the store some time this week so will have to check out the pencils.

Someone told me awhile back, that they write on a label with a permanent marker and push the marker down under the soil line and it will not fade....don't know if this works or not but I will be trying it the year. I've been using the mini blinds for labels for a couple years now....I like how I can make they as long or short as I want. I will be making them longer, writing on both ends of the label and half will be under the soil line....see if this works. tish

It fades... not as fast but it fades..!! I hase so many plants in my yard that I have no idea what they are!!

The magic marker DOES fade - they last about 6 months.

KayJones... what you said!

Checked out the china pencils yesterday but decided that the tip is a little too blunt for my writing. But will keep on checking around.

Write your labels with a paint pen, available wherever craft supplies are sold, and paint over the writing with clear acrylic - done and done. It won't fade for a long, long time, if ever.

I finally started using paint pens this spring- good tip about the acrylic. Thanks!

Did we all forget????

Pencil writing NEVER fades. Pencils are dirt-cheap!

I use pencils for that reason. Ebony is my favorite brand, because they write extra dark.

Yup, I bought a dozen cheapo mechanical pencils from Wal-Mart with 0.7 mm or 0.9 mm lead (so I could lose several but always have plenty around).

The 0.7mm lead is so fine I can cut mini-blinds in half lengthwise, or even thirds, and still read my handwriting. I use very thin markers in 72-cell or 128-cell prop trays.

Then I "splurged" on two $6 STAEDTLER drafting pencils from JetPens.

http://www.jetpens.com/Staedtler-925-65-Drafting-Pencils/ct/1181
http://www.jetpens.com/Pentel-Sharp-Drafting-Pencils/ct/1437 (cheaper)

Pencil never fades.

Mechanical pencils are always sharp.

Haaa...Haaa...Rick----

Mechanical pencils also always break the lead with any pressure.
I only use them for Crossword puzzles...

The good old wood-pencils, that you sharpen, are the best--and the cheapest.

Gita

>> Mechanical pencils also always break the lead with any pressure.

I agree, for the colored leads that are 0.7 mm ...
or the 0.3 mm graphite, even "super-polymer graphite" ...
and with my clumsiness, some 0.5 mm graphite leads ...

but the 0.9 mm leads are strong, and the 0.7 mm fairly strong.

I haven't used wooden pencils since grade school, when I used to grind and grind whenever I sharpened one - they didn't last long for me.

I always assumed that a tube of replacement leads was cheaper than a similar number of wooden pencils, but it must depend on whether you snap the leads often, or sharpen like a mad-man.

I harvest at night. I can not read pencil in the dark! The letters are not thick enough to see.... even with my glasses. Paint pens harden quickly.

Rhapsody

You have inspired me with many questions.

I have definitely had pencil writing fade; maybe I'm not using the right pencils.

Is this the "Ebony"? http://www.amazon.com/Prismacolor-Premier-Graphite-Sketching-Pencil/dp/B00006RVSK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338053708&sr=8-1

Doesn't it get costly to use clear nail polish on every label? Is varnish the same thing? Acrylic?

Rick, with a mechanical pencil can you choose the softness of the lead? Which do you select? How are the STAEDTLER drafting pencils from JetPens different?

Is this the garden marker some of you have referred to? http://www.gardeners.com/Permanent-Paint-Marker/37-559,default,pd.html?SC=XNET8033&utm_campaign=cse&mr:trackingCode=39484790-0479-E111-929E-0019B9C2BEFD&mr:referralID=NA Or http://www.burpee.com/Seed-starting/accessories/marking-pen-prod001224.html?CAWELAID=931583667? There seem to be lots of brands. Maybe they are just paint markers.

Final comment: I love using the miniblinds. There is something about the stiffness and slight curvature that I prefer to the purchased labels.

I recently attended an apple grafting class, and one of the instructors had fashioned tags made from vinyl siding, with a hole punched for a wire. He used a soft graphite pencil to mark the varieties. They look good and he says they last several years, so I bought a pack of soft graphite pencils that also included a few 2B graphite pencils.

It just so happens I have a single hole lever punch, and a piece of vinyl siding that was left under the porch when a previous homeowner sided the house. It cuts just fine with tin snips. I just made a few tags for some elderberry cuttings I started this spring (and hope to sell).

Hi Happy_Macomb,

"Is this the "Ebony"?"

Yes, that is it. They are also usually available in local arts and crafts stores. They are wooden pencils, so you have to sharpen them "the old fashioned way". I have never had Ebony fade on commercial plastic labels. If the plastic labels seem too smooth to take pencil well, I lightly sandpaper the label with a fine grit sandpaper. That, combined with bearing down hard, produces very dense, dark marks.

Perfect -- thanks -- though I'm not looking forward to sharpening "the old fashioned way...."

My major reason to like mechanical pencils is "they're always sharp". And you can get them sharper and finer than I ever want: 0.9 mm is good for a bold mark, and 0.7 mm is plenty fine for me. But you can buy 0.5 mm or even 0.3 mm if you have a light touch and a magnifying glass!

>> Rick, with a mechanical pencil can you choose the softness of the lead? Which do you select? How are the STAEDTLER drafting pencils from JetPens different?

I'ved tried HB and B (B is softer). The difference is slight and may even be imaginary! But I imagine that the B is very slightly darker, but also very slightly more willing to smudge if I rub my thumb on the wsiritng, hard. So now I don't care. (I never tried 2B).

I happen to buy a brnad that cliams it has "Super-Polymer lead". Who knows, maybe it does break less pften!

Here's another subtle or imaginary difference: I started with very old, rather dirty and greasy mini-blinds. I tried washing them with Comet cleanser, which is slightly abrasive.. I IMAGINE that makes the surface slightly rougher and slightly better for taking a dark pencil mark. Or you can scrub them with a green nylon scrubber, which by the way takes some of the pencil mark off, if you re-use the blinds. VERY slightly abrasive, maybe.

Or you can put them through the dishwasher ... but don't use the heated-dry feature! Even very hot water may encourage them to get twisty. I made the mistake of winding some through the "pins" in the dishwasher rack, then washing. They may have had a few m inujtes of heated drying as well. The bends became permanent.

I also finally found a source of COLORED leads for mechanical pencils (0.7 m m, not 0.9 mm). They break much too easily for my clumsy fingers, and the colored mark is faint. So I don't use those.

Staedtler (or any classy mechanical pencil) has metal parts and is just better made than the dozen-for-a-few-bucks plastic cheapy pencils from Wal-Mart. One batch I bought was so cheap that not all of them held the lead firmly ... when you write, the lead is pushed back into the tip, so you have to keep twisting it out every few words. So I threw half of those away.

Thanks, Rick. I wonder where I went wrong -- the pencil I used way-back-when definitely didn't last, so of course that makes me nervous to try again -- but it would be so much easier to use pencil! Maybe I'll do a controlled experiment and report back in a few years (don't hold your breath!).