Lables for your garden!

HELLO FOLKS!

So! I had these big plans to update you on all the plants under my lights. I took special care in taking snap shots of each one, I brought my phone cord downstairs so I could upload the photos aaaand...

yup! Phone is gone... just gone lol! I have no idea where. Also, it's totally dead too, so... I can't even call myself to find it! AAH! Oh well. I've been enjoying being unplugged the last 24 hours. I get addicted to my phone, but I've done enough media fasting in my life to turn off of technology pretty fast. :)

So instead I'm subbing in with some photos I took a while ago and already uploaded!

GARDEN LABLES!

Not only are garden labels functional, they can actually be really really cute! Also...they can be free!! Yup!

WHAT YOU'LL NEED
You will need some paint stir sticks. Both Rona and Home Depot will let you take a decent handful of them for free if you ask them nicely enough. Last year (and this year) I visited about 3 times to get the amount of stir sticks I needed for my rather large garden plot.

Thanks to these lovely ladies for the paint sticks! I believe they are "casually" covering their names on the aprons lol! Don't worry ladies! Home depot's  technically getting free advertising thanks to you!  You won't get in trouble!! ;)

Acrylic paint. If you don't already have acrylic paint, you could also use leftover house paint that you have kicking around, if you don't mind all your signs being the same color! Otherwise, take a trip to the dollar store and pick your favorite colors. I found bolder colors popped really well with white lettering against the black soil of early spring! So buy a variety of colors, along with white!

Varnish... An outdoor  quality varnish! It's stinky, but it'll ensure you don't need to re-make the same sticks year after year! :) Mine from last summer are still doing fantastic. I did make more this year, just because I broke a few, and didn't make sticks for every kind of plant last year. So i'm expanding my collection!

Paint brushes: At least one wide one for the colors, and one thin one for the lettering.

WHAT TO DO!

Start by making a list of what plants you want to grow. Then decide how many plant markers you want for each plant. For example, I did 10-15 tomato markers last year cause I knew I was planting two full rows of tomatoes. But I only made 1 marker for each herb I was growing. So figure out your numbers.

Next, decide if you want to use various colors, and assign the colors to your list of markers as seen above in my color assignments! (this is a step you can skip if you have an awesome memory and you'll just remember it all.

After all that planning, the fun begins! I usually do about 20 sticks at a time. Paint one coat on each stick. By the time you paint stick 20, stick 1 will be dry and ready for it's second coat of paint.

Again, by the time stick 20 has it's second coat, you can usually flip stick 1 around and begin painting the other side! :) If you're nervous about  the freshly dried paint sticking to your surface, simply prop your sticks on another object, like I have in the photo above, so that none of the painted surfaces are touching your table!

Believe it or not, by this point, you'll likely be "done with painting" for a bit. It's more time consuming than you'd think. But it's a fun and relaxing time consuming, that doesn't require much skill or artistic ability! So either set your sticks aside to dry/cure for a day or so, or you can move ahead and start lettering on the first side of your sticks.

This part is pretty self-explanatory. Simply spell out each plant kind, on the markers with your white paint. White shows up on lighter colors like yellow too. If you have room, and you're artsy, feel free to doodle a little veggie or flower on the stick below your word to suit it's variety. But the signs are just as cute without this step!

You will need to do a second coat of paint on the lettering, if you want it to really pop. As you can see above, the left two labels only have one coat of paint, where the right two labels have two coats. It makes the white more vibrant and the letters more crisp. The overall "cuteness" factor goes up. It's still rustic without looking like a hack-job basically!

You do two coats of lettering, let that dry for a full day (you don't want to mess up your lettering with a lack of patience on this). Then do the second side the same way. Once that dries, you can varnish! I recommend varnishing outdoors or in a garage, as it tends to be pretty fumy.

Usually I will leave my sticks in a big long row somewhere to dry/cure for a week or two (basically forget about them) because I find freshly dried varnish tends to feel tacky, and I don't feel comfortable stacking the sticks when they are still slightly tacky.

And that's it! Stick ol' Rona or Home depot right into the ground when you've planted your seeds, and you'll have a pretty looking garden right from the get-go! Plus you'll be able to remember where your seeds are, and know what the weeds are! These also came in very handy in our larger garden, when my husband or father in law would offer to till between the rows! I simply had to point out where the markers ended each row, and I knew nothing would get accidentally tilled (Except maybe a marker or two lol)!

Anyways, hopefully I'll find my phone before too long, and I'll be able to post a nice update on what's happening under the ol' plant lights for you all! :) But likely not till after our trip! (Oh yes we are!!)  We're taking the kids to great wolf lodge in Minneapolis for some water park fun from Wednesday to Saturday!

So until after that's over, Keep the thumbs green! (and get your tomato and cucumber seeds planted already!!)