Dinosaur Garden Markers!

I always peruse the toy section of my local dollar store (you never know when you'll find something cute to send the nieces, right?). This time around, with garden crafts on the brain, I saw these little plastic dinosaurs and was inspired! They make great little garden markers for your plants, and add some whimsy to your garden. In addition, they work well with small potted plants and larger garden plots alike.

To make my dinosaur garden markers all I needed was:

A package of plastic toy dinosaurs ($1/pack of 8)
A permanent marker

Simply write the name of your plants on the dinosaur with permanent marker and allow to dry completely before touching. Place in your pot or in a garden row, and have a cute little dinosaur remind you what you've got sprouting :)

Vanilla Extract Printable Tags

I have finally gotten around to making a printable tag for my Vanilla Extract! As you can see, I opted for a tag that could be tied on with a ribbon, and therefore fit both my cylindrical bottle and my circular bottle without being altered.

You could certainly print these onto sticker paper and place them onto a cylindrical or flat bottle, but a round one would likely pucker and not look as pretty.

Here is a copy of the printable. You can alter it in your favorite photo editing software to make it fit any size bottle. I printed mine 2"x3" and used a hole punch to run ribbon through. Very nice if giving as a gift.

Papercraft Garden Markers

Here is a no fuss garden marker that uses very few items. It isn't as durable as the glass garden markers, but if you change up the items in your garden every year or have trouble keeping track of small items like these, this may be the route you want to go. All you need is some thicker paper (scrap booking paper, construction paper, etc.), scissors, pen or marker and some clear contact paper.

Cut out your marker shape from the paper. I just did a standard stake marker, but you can get creative--shape it like a pepper, tomato, etc., make them circles, squares...go nuts! Once you have the paper cut out, write your label on the paper and then cover both sides carefully with the clear contact paper (this step is what makes it water resistant so you don't ruin your labels the first time you water the plants).

As you can see, at the bottom of the marker I have a little point to help it go into the soil more easily. You will probably want this point on your markers for the same reason, but it isn't absolutely necessary.

Also, I left a tiny bit of room when cutting around my contact paper. You want to make sure that the paper edges aren't exposed to the moisture of your soil or it won't be nice looking or last as long.

Glass Garden Markers

As promised, here is another idea for making your own garden markers. There will be a couple more fun ideas for more of these soon, as well. This garden marker is made from a glass tile (the same kind I use to make magnets). I used some of my favorite glass paint that you cure in the oven, and just painted on my herb name. If you get your glass paint in pen form, this would certainly look a little bit neater than mine, but I used what I already had on hand.

These are great for me, as I have my entire garden indoors on my windowsill. However, if you have a large outdoor garden I would suggest finding river rocks that are a bit larger and painting them with your veggie names and sticking them at the end of your rows. You could use regular paint if you do this, and just cover the entire rock with polyurethane (though many paints will be just fine if you skip that step).

Don't want to put all this effort into your garden markers? Later this afternoon I will have a super easy garden marker that uses only colorful paper, pens and contact paper coating!

DIY Garden Markers

I've been busy the past few days working on my container garden. We have a very small apartment, with no outdoor space but a large window ledge. This year I decided to try out some lettuce in window boxes, tomatoes in individual pots, and also some lemon thyme. We may or may not add some basil when it warms up a bit. To keep my plants organized (I have several types of lettuce and tomatoes) I decided to try my hand at making some bright, colorful garden markers.

I had some sculpey clay you bake in the oven to cure, so I thought I'd see how it worked in this application. As you can see in the picture, this marker is for my lemon thyme. I decided to make a little yellow lemon (that turned out ok, but not as well as it maybe could have) and stuck it onto a larger pink stake that I gently wrote "thyme" into. I allowed my creation to dry and harden overnight before I followed the baking instructions on the package to cure it.

I will say, that If you want to try this out, I would only use these markers for indoor potted plants, and I would probably make mine a bit thicker next time (these are only about 1/16 of an inch thick). I don't see them lasting me any longer than this season.

Worry not, for I will be sharing some other garden markers ideas with you later this week that I am still in the process of finishing. All of these other types will have much greater longevity, but are not quite as family friendly to make. This particular garden marker would be great to do with the kids in an afternoon.