On 10/4/08 17:39, in article , "Pat
Gardiner" wrote:


"Bob Hobden" wrote in message
...

"Sacha" wrote
The problem with all printed labels is the fading over time. In a
private
garden and with enough time to do it, I'd go for lead labels and
'scratch'
what you want onto those. Many places sell them and they're both
attractive
and practical for the private gardener, IMO. Otherwise, my personal
experience is that Dymo labels last as well, if not better, than most
things.

We used Dymo out on the allotment for years on white painted sticks and
now use the Brother Labeller machine most GCs sell and find that they work
even better, not least because you can get black letters on white
background. We stick the labels onto large white plastic labels.

Many thanks all for advice.

I'm probably more fanatical than most about labelling ( Certainly more
fanatical than some nurseries! ) I remember the old grey metal scratch
labels but haven't seen them for years.

I'm thinking of the quite prettily shaped lead ones - faux lead?. I think
the RHS or NT does them, or something similar. And these are attractive
http://www.eclection.net/product_inf...roducts_id=156

Interestingly today, I was very amused to find that one of our most
prominent seed suppliers has been naughty.

I kept my emply packet of a variety of squash from a previous years, as a
reminder to buy some more. Unable to get the original variety, I bought the
nearest to it with a different name and description, but the same supplier
with colourful packet

Examination later revealed that the photo was the same, colour changed
slightly and very thoughtfully reversed, with printing obscuring the most
obvious points of similarity.

My wife's family were all in the seed trade, so I can have an interesting
day or two muttering about marrying into a bunch of rogues.


;-))

Labelling is the bane of our lives - sometimes. You can label as carefully
as you like but customers take stick in labels out of pots, read them and
drop them on the ground or, worse still, put them into the wrong pots. One
day I watched a child, observed by its uncaring mother, wandering up a bank
of plants here, taking labels out of every pot and alternating them with the
next door pat of a totally different species or variety every time. We must
sweep up hundreds of labels every year. Tie-ons don't suffer the same fate
but you can't use those on emerging perennials.

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'