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I live on a very windy hilltop & I don't know what to do to keep plastic labels from being "gone with the wind". Even plastic knives with the entire blade sunk into the ground want to heave up & then blow around. The knives generally don't go too far, but the mini blind labels - I've even found them moved to different beds ! At this point I'm about to think it's useless to even bother once they are in the ground. Obviously it's necessary to know when I WS so I can transplant to a suitable location. But after that I don't know what I could do short of purchasing expensive metal labels for everything & that's not really feasible for the number of plants I'm dealing with. I think part of the problem is this sandy soil because my 2 lasagna beds are not as bad. Any suggestions?
I just had the strange idea of using a segment of a wire hanger, bent in half in a U shape and stuck in the ground like a giant staple or upholstery pin. Then you could tie your plastic label with a hole in it to the U of the hanger. Think it would work? (It would be a drag bending the hanger!)
The only use I really make of plastic labels is for winter sowing containers and other pots, before planting out into the garden. Once in the garden, they get a metal label, and I bury the plastic label with the plant as a backup. I bought a case of markers from EON one year, and it's one of the best garden investments I've made, because I just have this obsessive need to know what's where, LOL.
I wonder if you could somehow weight the base of your plastic label when you bury it... or pin it down as Carrie suggested (sort of a cheaper version of metal garden markers).
Yepper that's what I do...someone had a co-op with tree tags...so they get put on as many things as possible...I don't have the wind but toddler (DGD) and pups that play havoc with tags...
I think some of my tags get helped out of the ground when the neighbors' dog & ours go mole digging. Somehow they just don't understand the difference between flower beds & the rest of the yard. If I'm lucky (not often), I find the uprooted plants before they perish & stick them back into the ground. Of course by then the tag has blown away & I don't have a clue what I'm replanting. LOL The other fun part is when I'm walking through the yard admiring my gardens & nearly break my ankle because I step into one of the holes they have made. I think maybe I would rather have the moles.
I'm not sure anybody has a good solution to tags that uproot themselves like that... but burying a plastic mini-blind marker in the plant hole can help!
Burying it may be a good solution. At least if I really need to know what something is I can dig up the info. Assuming it doesn't come up on its own. I actually had whole plants heave out of the ground this year (not from the dogs LOL). Don't know if those will make it. I don't know what was different this year, except maybe that some were planted quite late & didn't have time to get "anchored". But even some that had been planted for a good while had to be pushed back down under the mulch. Anybody have suggestions for that?
I have that issue too, labels gone, in the path, beside a plant obviously not what the label says.
I like the idea of burying an 'extra copy' of the label. In working in my late father's garden, I was happy to come across some buried tags identifying the daylilies they were with since I had no clue as to the cultivar. Now I can verify that the tag 'matches' the flower when it blooms.
