Never Use Permanent Marker On Plant Tags- It May Disappear!
Never Use Permanent Marker On Plant Tags- It May Disappear!
Imagine it: you're planning your biggest, best veggie garden yet. You've sowed lots of cool, new-to-you flowers, herbs, peppers, squash, and tomatoes. You've marked each of them with a little plastic tag, writing each name neatly in permanent marker. It's bold, it's dark, it's permanent- it's not going anywhere. After last frost, you plant all of your seedlings and sit back, waiting for them to provide you with a well-deserved harvest. You see your first tomato has ripened, and in excitement, you bend down to check the tag.
Nothing. It's blank. So you check the neighboring plant: blank.
You know you had names written on all of those tags. So, what happened?
Why are all of the plant variety tags blank after being in the garden?
Permanent Marker Doesn't Perform Well Outdoors
When you write on plant tags with permanent marker and stick them outside, they tend to fade away fairly quickly. The sun bleaches the permanent marker ink, leaving virtually no trace behind. Therefore, you don't want to use a permanent marker to write your ID tags for your flowers, vegetables, and herbs; especially if you want to be able to identify them after being exposed to UV light for so long.
Popsicle sticks will hold permanent marker much better than plastic tags throughout the season. The ink tends to bleed into the wood, so it stays readable. However, those will decompose rapidly. They begin to fall apart, rot, fungal colonies settle in, and they become very brittle. All in all, both options are quite the gamble.
I'll give you one guess as to how I found out permanent markers don't work for plant tags outside. Thankfully, I didn't have a whole lot of rare varieties planted; it was easy figure out which was which based on appearances alone, as it was earlier in my gardening journey. This could have been an absolute disaster just a year or two later, which is why it's included in my eBook 50 Mistakes That I Will Not Make Again as a Farmer or Gardener. If I use a permanent marker these days, it's only to mark plants that need identification indoors; I know they won't make it outside in the garden.
Writing Utensils to Use for Garden ID Labels
For your run of the mill plastic labels, use a pencil. Pencil lasts. It doesn’t fade. And even if the tag gets a little dirty, you can still read it. That's "write", a good old, yellow #2 pencil! It might not be as bold as black ink, but it'll hang on for dear life in the garden.
You can also use a paint marker, which does hold up better than regular permanent marker. It'll cost a little more, and it will be a little bolder than pencil. Depending on the paint pen, it might be a little more difficult to write out long or complex variety names, too.
Pencil is still my #1 choice for my plant labels. I should probably invest in a pencil with softer lead that will write a little darker, but a regular pencil has treated me well for many years.
Bonus Tip: Don't Rely Solely on Plant ID Tags! Have a Backup Method!
Even if you’re using a pencil, also jot down what you planted and where. I like to use a spiral notebook for this purpose. Sometimes, I'll create a word document on my phone to record the varieties as I plant them. This is such an important, easy step and I cannot recommend doing this enough.
Why have a backup method? If a storm blows through, tags disappear. If an animal drags one off, it’s gone. You could even pull up weeds and accidentally rip it out of the ground. Having a backup map can save your sanity, especially if you tend to save seeds or plant rare, unique varieties like strawberry mint or rare, in demand zinnia seeds.
Your plants are an investment of time, labor, money, and resources. If you're doing a rare tomato grow out like I do most years, losing your labels and not knowing what variety is planted where could be devastating. Sure, you might be able to identify a few plants based on fruit; but what happens when hybridized seed is planted unintentionally (cross pollination) and you have no way to identify the parent variety? This year, I had 4 or 5 varieties that were unintentional hybrids; if I didn't have labels for each plant, some could have been mistaken for other varieties. For example: I had a cherry variety that grew into a heart shaped, medium tomato; I could have confused it for a nearby paste variety, but it was likely a cross between a cherry variety and an oxheart if I had to guess.
Another concern is high plant mortality rate among vines, especially due to pests. When I trial new squash varieties, I can have significant losses due to squash vine borers. However, it can be hard to distinguish some squash plants from one another due to similarities; it can also be hard to hunt down tags among the vines, or to trace vines for that matter. Having two ways to track down the vines & identify losses can help to simplify this process.
Final Thoughts & Discussions
So, all in all:
Plastic plant tags + pencil = the winning combo in my garden. You simply can't go wrong with this method of labeling your plants; oh, and don't forget your planting journal as a safety net!
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Discussions:
- Have you ever had a major labeling mishap, especially a widespread one?
- What's your favorite way to label your garden plants?
- Do you keep a gardening journal? Do you have unique notes/data that you keep track of?
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