No-Cost Seedling Markers

It's time to start planting garden seedlings indoors! In years past I've marked my tray of seedlings with popsicle sticks. Unfortunately, the bottoms of the sticks often rot off by planting time. It's disappointing when that happens plus I have to buy more sticks every year. So this year, I went looking for a better solution, one that was rot-proof, reusable and FREE.

Plastic banding strap

Sheet metal shears

Marker

I found my banding strap at a home improvement center. Banding strap is used to hold bundles and crates together during shipment. It becomes garbage after the shipments are received. I found my strap material balled-up and in a shopping cart ready to be discarded. You can ask a store associate for some if you don't see it laying around.

It's pretty tough stuff, so I used metal-cutting shears to cut my seedling markers, Crescent Wiss aviation shears easily cut through the strap. I cut my plant markers four inches long with an angle-cut tip. Some of the pieces were a bit curved, but easily straighten out by bending them in the opposite direction. The strap had some lettering on it, but that was easily removed with light knife blade scraping.

I wrote the plant names on the strap segments with a magic marker. So far it resists rubbing off, but could be removed with alcohol or by scraping.