robust labelling system?

[SH]

Right...

I grow strawberries in a greenhouse. I use 14 litre builders buckets with drainage holes drilled into the bottom.

I have 45 said buckets in a greenhouse with an automatic fertigation system.

Last year I had Elsanta strawberries.

This year I now have 4 varieties, Honoeye, Cambridge gold and Florence as well as the aforementioned Elsanta as some crop earlier and some crop later to widen out the harvest season.

Now I also grow new strawberry plants every year from the stolons from the current plants.

Now I need a robust labelling system that (a) tells me what the breed is and (b) what its birth year was.

sticky labels will come off easily.

permanent marker pens fade in the sunlight.

Those white sticks get easily knocked out out the soil.

I dont mind marking the buckets directly but bear in mind I need to be able to reuse the bucket once the strawberry plants has been binned when reaching age 3.

I could drill holes into the rim of the bucket to indicate 1 or 2 or 3 holes for year but what about the breed of the plant? square hole, triangular hole, slot hole and round hole perhaps? where would one get such a puncher?

[SH]

I throw strawberry plants in the compost bin after 3 years (fruit yield is poor thereafter so all strawberry plants are always 3 years old or younger.)

[williamwright]

Dymo Rhino 4200 Label Printer With QWERTY (UK) Keyboard would be perfect. I use one for outdoor labels. They don't fade or fall off.

Bill

[SH]

Thats an interesting thought......

I do have this machine as it happens:

The buckets I use are these:

with 17 holes drilled into their bottoms....

I am assuming the black polymer is polypropylene and I did wonder if the labels from my machine would actually stick to polypropylene?

(they make cheap plant pots at 97p :-) )

given the heat and water in said greenhouse, i was concerned the labels would simply fall off the buckets.....

[S Viemeister]

The Brother label makers also work very well.

[Chris Hogg]

Make your own from empty beer or other fizzy drink cans. The metal is so thin you can cut them up with a pair of heavy-duty scissors, then scratch them with a sharp point or write on them hard with an old ball-point to give impressed text. Throw the scratched ones away afterwards, or hammer the impressed ones flat and use them again.

[newshound]

Another very durable and robust labelling product is Tulip Slick "fabric paint". This has the advantage of adhering to uneven surfaces better than printer tape, also available in black, white, and colours. I use it for marking the 13A plugs on power tools and computer equipment. Also "stacking" toolboxes and multi-part containers.

[alan_m]

Have you tried the Brother tape labels

Many different models of machines at various price points

many different label colour combinations I've had these tape labels stick to plastic flower pots very well and I've only seen fading on labels 10+ years old - but still readable.

[Andy Burns]

Where the "normal" D1 tapes do flake off sooner or later (even indoors) I've had good results from the D1 "permanent" tapes, I see they have new D1 "durable" tapes, e.g.

[Andy Burns]

They don't make the same specialist tapes for the LetraTag machines, look for the machines (e.g. LabelManager) that take the D1 tapes up to

24mm wide.

[Andy Burns]

Sorry wrong link

[S Viemeister]

We've used those tapes to label the mailbox at the end of the drive - the labels have lasted longer than the mailboxes. No fading, no peeling.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

My mother when she was alive used some kind of thing made by Scotch. Yes they were glued on but were not dymo, you just prized then off from what you stuck them on at the end of the year if you wanted to change them, trouble is I cannot recall what they were called, white on a black background, looked almost engraved and though you could bend them a little, they were best on a clean dry flat surface. I think she inherited it from her place of work when they shut down. Brian

[Andy Bennet]

Drill holes in rim and thread through coloured tyraps. I'm sure you can come up with a useful code for a sequence of colours. Easy/quick/bombproof and replaceable.

[charles]

Traffolite? 3 layer black laminate with the centre white. Etch or engrave the outer and you got white lettering.

[Jim White]

Find a heritage railway with a luggage label / name tag stamp machine on the platform.

[nightjar]

Aluminium labels:

Metal letter and number punches:

Plus a hammer..

[alan_m]

It may depend on the colour of the tape. I've tended to use the fluorescent yellow background tapes. A white background may be better, but as I said my faded tape was still readable after 10 years.

As a side issue, I've has the "day-glo" fluorescent paint sold in rattle cans fade away to almost nothing within two years when exposed outside to the sun only in the mornings (in shade after approx 11am). The paint had been further protected by a clear coat.

[jkn]

Separate to your query, but since you seem to know your strawberries...

I have a couple of strawberry beds and have been a bit lax about cutting off runners etc. I am about to tidy things up; is it worth clearing out the older plants and letting the new ones formed from runners grow on; or should I clear the whole lot out?

Thanks for your advice J^n

[Owain Lastname]

"Slide binders" for A4 paper are available in lots of colours and would stick further into the soil than the little plant labels.

Then attach your choice of labels to the slide binder, stick on, cable tie or just slide in.

Owain