> One of my gardening books suggests using old aluminium cans to make permanent
> plant labels. I assume you scratch the plant name onto the shiny metal
> side of the aluminium foil. Excuse my ignorance, but does this work... erm
> how long do they last ? (Does the metal colourize over time ?)
I've not used this technique but it would probably work somewhat. You would just cut the can into strips and write on the inside with some sort of stylus (an old ball point pen would work). The metal is soft and will take an impression of the writing if you back it up with a couple of sheets of newspaper on a hard surface. The writing is just impressed in the metal surface and is not colored, so it is not easy to read from a distance.
Aluminum does oxidize over time, particularly when exposed to acid rain. However, the metal labels you buy at the garden center will likely have the same problem. The cans have the advantage that they're anodized to prevent corrosion by the stuff they put into them.
The strips of aluminum can will have sharp edges, so you might want to bend them over to avoid hazards to small children and pets.
The labels will have to be mounted on something to hold them up. A length of galvanized wire can be bent around the strip and hammered tight to hold the label. Wood supports will rot.
I think cutting up a bleach jug and using a permanent marker might be a better idea. No sharp edges and the plastic lasts a long time. Could be a use for old floppies too. Thread a wire or string through the hole and write on the floppy with a marker.
The Rhododendron Species Foundation has sometimes used aluminum tags for field-grown species shrubs -- as these labels have to last several years before the shrubs are old enough to put on sale. The tags must be removed from plants before the shrubs are sold, as one rarely sees any of them, but I obtained one rhody from them that I later found had an aluminum tag that had the attached end deeply imbedded in the bark. The aluminum had been EMBOSSED with species name, date it was planted (or a least tagged, a decade earlier), & initials RSF. There must be some equivalent of those plastic label strips to emboss aluminum strips instead of plastic.
The surface of aluminum turns black over time & rubs off, though I wouldn't call that "colourize" which is what I thought crazy rich bastards did to classic black & white films.
Man-made aluminum & aluminates MIGHT have some involvement in the development of alzheimers disease, though years back when Science Digest did a whole issue about it, looked like only about one out of ten researchers thought it much likely. A few researchers think the link is plausible; others think the aluminum deposits are an incidental side-effect of other causes. From a lay perspective though it seems that the only other possible explanation for these deposits, other than from our continuous exposure to man-made aluminum, is that the human body can go wacky & begin to manufacture aluminum from boxite, which is all around us in the natural environment whereas aluminum is not. For there's no question but that the majority of alzheimer patients have amazingly high levels of aluminum deposits in the brain tissue. So while the science proving or disproving a source of explanation for these deposits has failed to clarify the issue, in the meantime anyone with aluminum kitchen pots & utensils should toss them immediately; & check medications & deodorants for aluminates with which we may be dosing ourselves orally or through the skin every day. As for aluminum beverage cans, they are coated inside & out -- everwhere except where the key-hole opening bares the raw aluminum in the one place we'd put our mouths. So I avoid those too.
I wouldn't want aluminum in the garden, first because it would be, like plastic, an eyesoar, for I like things to look as woodsy-natural as possible. Plus, even if a few aluminum tags here & there would likely be harmless whether or not aluminum's connection to severe loss of mental faculty can be shown to be factual, it'd still be like hanging symbols of humanity's self-invented doom all around the place, & I prefer the symbolism of my gardens to refer more to Eden rather than some futuristic city designed by Albert Speer.
-paghat the ratgirl preferring to die from UNrefined sugar
I'm picturing a garden decorated with cut-up Budweisser cans & Clorox bottles.
How 'bout making an elaborate paper collage with the name of each plant somewhere on the collage, imbed the collage in a block of fiberglass resin, mount the block of resin on a three foot length of rebar, & pound these in the ground in front of each plant.
OR, buy a kiln to manufacture your own bathroom tiles but adapted as garden tiles, each tile glazed with naive images of flowers, & the name of the plant, & these would be strewn about in the garden in from of each plant.
OR, with copper wire & the tiniest glass beads, use needlenosed pliars to shape a length of beaded wire into the name of the plant. Nail this to the top edge of a one-foot-long chunk of two-by-four & cement the other end of the 2x4 into the ground near the labeled plant.
OR, with a woodburning kit make Buddhist gravemarkers our of slats, with the names of flowers instead of the dead burnt right into the slats. If you're worried the wooden slats will rot in a few years, then get plastic toy airplanes in all sorts of colors, & use the woodburning kit to melt in the names of the plants on the wings of the airplanes & hang them from the appropriate plants.
I know a couple of guys who would like their garden decorated with beer cans (Labatt's blue, not Bud), but it's not for everyone.
The labels are generally meant to be unobtrusive, just there for information, so they might be small and not detract from the flowers (which are, after all, the main point). Also, the printed label part of the cans would be on the back, so you'd only see the "inside" of the can. Personally, I'd rather put my effort into the garden and not the labels, but then my garden is just there without any labels at all, so you will have to guess what's what.
PS: plastic bottles are generally not protected against solar UV, so they will disintegrate with exposure. Anywhere from a couple of months to a couple of years.
"....... One of my gardening books suggests using old aluminium cans to make permanent plant labels. I assume you scratch the plant name onto the shiny metal side of the aluminium foil. Excuse my ignorance, but does this work... erm how long do they last ? (Does the metal colourize over time ?) ........"
You cut the label to the size you want then using an old Ball point pen you inscribe the name, the indentation will last for years.
If you want to label tree or shrub then make a hole at each end . Insert soft wire into one end, then wind several coils around your ball point pen to form a coil like a spring, then plain wire to other end of the label. As the tree or shrub grows there is plenty of slack in the coil, so nothing gets embedded in the plant.
snipped-for-privacy@netscape.net (paghat) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@soggy72.drizzle.com:
I'd be more worried about the sodium aluminum phosphate they typically use in fake cheese. other possibly bad stuff for your brain: monosodium glutamate (MSG) and aspartme (Nutrasweet)
"Don K" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:
Arguably the stuff that comes to you is man-made (in the same way a wooden chair is man-made) as it needs to be processed from bauxite and other struddlishish stuff that I don't recall going by the name Hall-Herholtz process (or just Hall if you don't like simultaneous discoveries).
that said you can't get anthrax in the mail and spent beaucoup bucks fumigating government offices and didn't get around to giving el cheapo masks or gloves to postal personnel until later, but I digress.
I agree it seems unlikely that you'll get aluminum toxicity from cans or cookware, it's more likely the stuff you eat and is passed as 'safe'. I'm a little wishy-washy on the subject, from my little knowledge of chemistry, the binding energy of aluminum oxide is quite high and anodizing it causes the protective layer of aluminum oxide to cover the entire surfaces (no significant gaps), so getting some aluminum out of that should be quite difficult, but then I'm reminded of the all the corrosion I've seen on aluminum storm windows and think, why take the chance?
If my garden is already 8.1% aluminum I don't see why it would be necessary to add more.
I hung mine from varnished copper wire. (avail from TV, but galvanic action hurts aluminium)
creating these is a very time consuming way to get very few and flimsy labels with sharp edges. I consider it an experiment from my youthful time-wasting youth. (redundancy)
(unless you're Ted kascymski[sp] in a remote cabin with hand tools): I recommend you buy and ration the long lasting durable labels. use plastic (PVC) labels for seed staring pencil marks can be rubbed off. surviving plants receive permanent labels after proving their survival and other value (pollen or seed source, etc)
I suspect the lead was used as color much as lead and titanium oxides in paint.
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Lead Sources ... Miniblinds In June of 1996, the US Consumer ... Mini-blinds which have been purchased since July 1996 should ... Safety Alert!...New Source of Lead Poisoning Identified ... stopleadpoisoning.com/enviroleadsources.html - 31k
ilike the idea (modified) of using uv resitant paint (epoxy??) on cheap ceramic tile.
PET (recycling #1) last along time in the sun, 10 years and only partially weakened) but they resist marking. they could be scratched, but scratched names (such as Comtesse de Canker § will likely be illegible, due to limited control of the scrawling tool.
yes i've seen old metal stamping sets (amateru) they are perhaps cheapo versoins of old manual typsetting lettering sets. look like the metal striking surface from typewriters. very time cionsuming to line teh blocks in a holder, though i've never tried.
:)
[bauxite in english]
which is all around
than from pol;yKeferiNacronates or KrapoOrganKeellerKryonitez?
Make a map of the garden if you need to know what is planted where. I have hundreds of plants on an acre of gardens and no labels. I am fortunate that I can identify and remember the name of plants. Draw the trees and shrubs and a border of the garden and any perennials, then laminate it, and use a china marker to put in the annuals. End of the season, you can wipe it clean and plan next years planting.
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