An Extra Row of Garden Markers

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Planting One More Row of Crops With Garden Markers for Those Struggling With Hunger in Your Community

garden markersAre you the gardener who plants just enough to feed your family or plants so much that you cart it to the break room table at work? Surplus isn’t a bad thing—especially when most seed packets offer more than what most backyard gardeners need. But there is a need in your community for the many people who go hungry every day. The Garden Writers Foundation (GWA) coordinates a service program called Plant a Row (PAR) that helps put some of that extra produce from your garden into the hands of those who need it. With an extra row of crops, and maybe a few more garden markers, gardeners across the country are helping fight hunger in their community.

PAR encourages gardeners to plant at least one extra row of produce in their garden to give away to local food banks or community organizations who give food to families who need it. Why keep extra seeds in a packet that won’t produce in later years? Whether your row is five more seeds or 50 more seeds, that row is a gift to the families in your community. Any gift given is a blessing to these families.

PAR began as a local project in Anchorage, Alaska and the GWA decided to spread the idea nationally. Since 1995, over 20 million pounds of food has been selflessly grown and given away to needy families across the country. GWA says that the contribution has been equivalent to providing 80 million meals.

Some people lack the money, gardening space, skill, time or interest to plant a garden and would be benefiting from healthy locally-grown food. Those of you gardeners out there know that produce picked ripe from your garden and eaten that same day has a superior taste to the produce that is transported across the nation and sits on grocery shelves for days before it’s purchased. The earlier produce is consumed, the more nutrients it offers your body. Eating healthy produce means less illness and healthier living. Projects like PAR offer families a crisp flavorful taste of homegrown produce and may inspire these families to plant some seeds of their own.

Kincaid Plant Markers would be privileged to know that their garden markers are watching over plants that can improve and even save lives. If you’re planting just one more row of carrots or spinach, you could use your same garden markers or you might decide to print up one more marker designated for your community—for others. We tend to think of gardeners as natural givers. It seems every gardener shares at one time or another—a few tomatoes for the young neighbor who keeps peering over the fence at those red juicy globes, a bag of green beans for the food kitchen, or a feast for friends celebrating a good harvest. One more row to you is just a minute more of planting seeds. To those you feed it is a feast of hope, happiness and health.

Markers for Peonies Give a Lift to Your Plants

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Mapping the Best Spot With Markers for Peonies

They look a bit like the Truffula trees in the Dr. Suess book, The Lorax. Big balls of petals on slender stems, peonies, make theirmarkers for peonies annual appearance in spring. Petals come in a variety of shades of pink, yellow and white. In order to keep your varieties straight and your plants safe until they emerge, you can plant markers for peonies right alongside your future blooms.

Getting a Strong Start

The Old Farmer’s Almanac suggests planting peonies in late September or in October. The chill of winter helps them become established and strengthens them for their spring blooms. They’ll do best in moist, well-drained soil and partial shade. Be sure not to plant them more than a few inches under the soil or they will struggle to rise up out of the soil.

Mark the Spot

Peony plants start as bare root tubers tucked just a few inches under the soil. Markers for peonies will help keep them safe during the late fall and before they poke through the ground in early spring. If your markers for peonies are in place before they emerge, you can plan ahead. Peony blooms are so large and their stems are so slender that their design seems a mystery. As the blooms grow, the stems bend until the blossoms pull toward the earth. One way to keep your blooms upright is to use support rings specifically designed for shrubs like peonies.

Not Very Neighborly

Peonies do not like competition for soil nutrients or water. They do best when they’re given space around them. Being bushy and full, with huge blooms and large waxy leaves, they are a pretty dense plant. Giving them a lot of space will help air flow through them a little more easily. They don’t like trees or other shrubs as their neighbors. They’d prefer a nice airy cluster of flowers or perhaps a leggy rose bush.

A Lovely Arrangement

Peonies make stunning cut flowers, but beware the little creatures that may come inside with them. Ants love licking up the nectar on the peony buds and so become tucked deep inside the blooms or under the green leaves at the base of the blooms. Before bringing your peonies inside, gently sift through the petals and under the leaves with your fingers to evict any little ant friends. Don’t spray the peonies, though. The ants help keep other pests off your peonies.

It’s tempting to wait until the peony flowers are bursting before cutting them for your vases, but you’ll get more bloom for your buck if you cut the flowers when the buds are still pretty tight and small. A little lukewarm water in a vase will coax the flower open more quickly.

Kincaid Plant Markers can give your peonies a little lift by helping mark where to put that support ring, and our markers for peonies can help distinguish between all the varieties that you may enjoy in your garden. Some peonies have lived to over 100 years old. We have faith that our markers specialize in longevity, too, and can offer your garden a lifetime of identification and protection.

 

Labels for Hostas Offer Equality Between the Giants and Miniatures in Your Garden

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We’re All About Keeping the Peace With Our Labels for Hostas

At first thought, gardeners may describe hostas as convenient shade plants with lovely green shades of foliage. But, you canlabels for hostas explore the many types of hostas and see that different hostas can be used to define or transform your garden into radically different atmospheres. Labels for hostas can give protection for your smallest hosta varieties that might be pared up next to their big hosta brothers or bold and flamboyant garden sisters. Whether large or small in size, garden markers will give equality in your landscape.

There are over 8,000 different cultivars of hostas. The tiniest of hostas could be hidden by the palm of your hand. These miniatures sprout only a few inches high and spread only four or six inches. The giants of the hosta world can rise to 60 inches tall and can spread to nearly 50 inches.

Small hostas can build a miniature world for a fairyland in your yard or can be just the right little plant to put in a garden border, in a rock garden or along a pavement’s edge. Labels for hostas can help point these miniatures out to the visitors in your garden who may not have noticed their little features and given them a second glance.

If you like to get “lost” in your yard and feel it surround you with lush greenery, you may enjoy the giant hostas. The giant hostas can bring the feel of a tropical jungle to your landscape in whatever state you live. With their gigantic leaves they can bring an almost prehistoric feel to your landscape—a place where young children may imagine dinosaurs poking their heads around the tall stalks and gargantuan leaves.

When hostas emerge from the ground in late spring, they poke through the soil in small points of leaves that will later unfurl. Between their pencil-point emergence and their elephant ear summer, the ground will need protection from the trampling of children’s and dog’s feet and sometimes even your forgetful steps. Labels for hostas will keep those tender shoots safe so your plant doesn’t have to repair itself and keep struggling to get above ground. With a marker in their midst, garden guests will be reminded to step carefully. It may also remind you to put a statue, decorative pot, or little fence in front of them to keep the dog from charging through that area in his daily pursuit of the evil squirrel (if only dogs could read garden markers).

Without labels for hostas, small varieties may be mistaken for weeds and even large varieties may go unseen and be trampled before they can emerge. We aren’t partial to any plant sizes at Kincaid Plant Markers. But we’re happy keeping the peace in your garden when it comes to finding a balance and fostering equality between the big and small. With equal representation in silver stainless steel garden markers with the same size name plates, each of your labels for hostas will offer equality and balance to the tall and small.

Plant Markers for Perennials Can Help Organize Your Garden Oasis

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Spread the Bloom Around Your Yard Using Plant Markers for Perennials

plant markers for perinnialHow would you like to transform your yard into a garden oasis without spending a dime? If you make an initial investment in perennials you can divide and spread those plants all throughout your yard for years without ever having to purchase any more costly annuals. As your garden expands, plant markers for perennials can help you remember the names of your perennials as well as help you remember where you moved them when the early spring earth all looks the same.

Perennials come up every year on their own. Once you’ve planted them, they take care of themselves. Perennials don’t need the care that annuals do. Perennial roots become established in your yard’s soil and adapt over the years. They don’t need the frequent watering and fertilizing like annuals do. Their deeper roots tap the groundwater and they use the nutrients in the soil.

Start with a few perennials and then grow from there. You may have caught the perennial bug and are ready to fill your yard with multiple varieties or you may decide to fill a few empty corners of the yard and wait another season to figure out what else you’d like to add. When you start with your first perennials, plant markers for perennials will be like the birth certificates of your first little plants that could parent many others over the years. As you divide your plants, these original plant markers for perennials will help you keep track of what you have.

Once your perennials start filling in your yard, you’ll find that you don’t need to spend any money buying plants each season. Spaces that you used to have to fill with costly annuals every year soon fill with the perennials that are spreading out. Then, to save even more money, you can divide those perennials and spread them around the yard. In a few seasons, one hosta plant that started under your tree can yield several little hostas to encircle the entire tree or to fill in a dirty shady spot where no grass or sun-loving plants seem to grow. A little bit of Columbine under the tree, in the corner and by the gate can expand the feel and look of your garden without any additional cost. Filling a garden with many varieties of perennials may take some patience, but the pay-off is huge.

As your garden grows lush with perennials, our Kincaid Plant Markers can help you keep track of where everything is growing with plant markers for perennials. Gardening doesn’t have to spend a fortune. In fact, many times gardening will only cost you some sweat and time. Try some perennials in your yard to save some money and build a garden oasis.

Kincaid Garden Markers Become Part of a Community Garden

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Garden Markers Make the Grade in Elementary School

Mark Twain 1Planting a garden can be as easy as A-B-C. But what happens when you combine gardening and the ABCs? A healthy lifetime learning experience for elementary students. A few weeks ago, Mark Twain Elementary School in St. Joseph, MO had an all-school celebration to open their community garden for its second season. As visions of ripe tomatoes, green beans, corn and other vegetables bloomed in their minds, they were to also have a new addition to their garden this year. Kincaid Plant Markers donated garden markers for the children and families to identify all the delicious and healthy produce they would be growing over the summer.

First thing in the morning, the entire school gathered in the gym to celebrate a new planting season. They sang songs about how each class would care for a part of the garden. They listened as Live Well coordinator, Drew Bouge, spoke passionately about the gifts that community gardens give back to us and our neighborhood. Then, they split up into different groups to visit stations that supported the joys and benefits of gardening as interpreted by Master Gardeners, Girl Scouts and University Extension members. They played a Memory card game and matched pictures of plants with their names. They saw multiple types of vegetables and fruits and they each got a baggy of their own delicious fresh vegetables to snack on.

The rain that morning prevented the first planting of seeds on that day, but the unveiling of the new stainless steel garden markers whetted their appetite for those delicious foods to come. When they planted those seeds later they planted the garden markers also. New sprouts in this newly developed garden will grow alongside those markers. Over the years, the little hands that plant those seeds will grow and, perhaps, someday the children of those children will plant their seeds in this continual feast. As each year passes, and new generations of families pass through the school, Kincaid garden markers will witness each harvest. The rust-proof, sturdy stainless steel will keep time away. Adults may remember the days they put those markers in the ground. Like old friends, they are familiar.

Garden markers will help individuals who aren’t gardeners identify the plants that are growing and offer opportunities for people to both find the vegetables they like and try new foods. The garden is on the property of the school, but all community members are welcome to come in, pull some weeds and harvest some crops for their family. Until seeds sprout, garden markers will keep the location of the plants safe from trampling or digging. Garden markers will also keep workers with good intentions from accidentally pulling up crops they thought were weeds.

Community gardens at elementary schools provide children with lifetime learning. They find out how to grow food that is healthy for them and their family. Seeds don’t cost much, but will produce much. Children can learn math, science, social studies and other skills through their garden.

Kincaid Plant Markers is happy to be a part of helping children become lifetime gardeners and helping the community lead healthier lives. Our garden markers couldn’t stand straighter and taller.

Complimentary Garden Markers for Your Companion Plants

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Garden Markers and Plants Working Together

garden markers“You work so well together”. “You look so good together”. If you are in a relationship, these quotes would have you smiling. But out in the garden, these same quotes can pepper the air—if you find yourself talking to plants and garden markers (not too unusual for tender-hearted gardeners).

Smart gardeners know that there actually is a rhyme and reason to productive gardens. Using companion plants can increase your crops, keep pests and weeds down, save space and conserve water. Your garden markers can also be companions to your plants—protecting them from being trampled in their first tender days when the first leaf emerges from the ground or from being dug up before they have a chance to emerge and complimenting their beauty with a sign of recognition on an attractive marker.

Sisters

In relation to early gardening practices of Native Americans, you may have heard of the “three sisters”: corn, beans and squash. While real sisters might not always get along, these three crops always complement each other in satisfactory harvests. Over centuries, gardeners have found that these companion plants offer each other advantages in order to survive.

The tall corn sprouts up in the middle of the mound and the pole beans use it for support as they climb. The squash’s thick leaves and vines help shade the ground and keep the soil moist where the spindly vines of beans rise from the earth. As squash thrives low to the earth, it also prevents weeds from moving in and around the other plants. As the plants grow through the summer season, they provide for one another.

The trick in companion planting is to plant two crops that really don’t grow the same way. You want height for full sun exposure mixed with low-growing thicker plants to protect spindly legs. You don’t want competition. Look for plants where even the root systems are different so that they don’t compete for nutrients.

Companions

The following are some suggested companion plants from the Mother Earth website:

  • Arugula and shallots
  • Spinach and garlic
  • Tomatoes and lettuce, celery or lima beans
  • Cabbage with leafy greens
  • Onions with leafy greens
  • Broccoli with lettuce or radishes
  • Corn and potatoes

Bugs be Gone

Some plants will offer their companions the gift of a season free from insect or animal pests. It’s often beneficial to pair flowering plants with your vegetables to attract pollinators and attract beneficial insects like hoverflies and ladybugs to your plants. Herbs like basil, oregano, garlic chives, sweet alyssum, fennel and cilantro have proven beneficial in protecting other crops from insect invaders.

Before I Rise

Garden markers are helpful companions before the growing season even starts. They hold the place of your plants, protecting winter’s dormant roots from being disturbed by spring garden tools. They help remind when the memory fails. You can order Kincaid plant markers in multiple heights so that they will complement the plant they will be next to in height. The silver stainless steel garden markers will make beautiful classic companions with any plants in your garden.

Give Your Garden a Lift With Garden Markers

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Garden Markers Help Your Gardens Grow Vertical

garden markersWe may tend to think of gardens as vertical designs. Shall we make the garden a traditional rectangle, square or circle, or let the edges weave like ripples in water or curve like a bean? But think of height, also, as you design your gardens. You can achieve interesting aspects of height in multiple ways in your garden. From small garden markers to huge garden sheds, structures among your plants can offer you some eye-pleasing variety in your yard.

At Kincaid Plant Markers, we offer three different post heights in 10”, 15” and 20 inches. This variety offers you the opportunity to add a little height to your garden and use posts that complement the plants they are representing. You might like your posts to stay lower to the ground or you might like them to add depth and elevation to your garden plants.

Decorative pillars can serve as cornerstone posts in your plots or be spaced within the garden like pawns on a chessboard or different heights of skyscrapers in a city. Statues, bird baths or large and tall vases for plants can help add height to your garden. Iron or wooden archways can lead visitors from one garden to another in your yard. You can emphasize the design and art of the structure by keeping it free of plant growth or you can blend it with greenery such as ivy, clematis, wisteria or other lush vegetation could cover it.

Adding fencing around your garden is another technique to give it some height. Wire or iron fences can be just transparent enough so that your plants don’t look too confined. The larger spaces in those fences offers some transparency from garden to garden and garden to yard. White picket fences or even solid wooden fences offer more of a confined height space and cut a yard up into neat little sections. Height can be neat or it can be completely random like the notes on a musical scale moving across the page, up and down.

One other way to add height to your yard is through larger structures like sheds. Tool sheds, playhouses, play sets, porch swings and tree houses can all add some ups to your yard while offering you useful places to store your equipment or places for your children to play among your garden.

The height you add to your yard doesn’t have to cost you a fortune. You don’t need the most ornate Grecian pillar or garden markers to make your garden feel sculpture-esque. Craftsmen can cleverly construct heightened sculpture from items like old bed headboards, fireplace screens and other re-used materials. Imagine the possibilities and stretch that right side of your brain.

At Kincaid Plant Markers, we are craftsmen and fellow gardeners. We hope that the craftsmanship and creativity of our garden markers can give your garden a lift this year!

 

Kincaid Plant Markers Crafts New Markers at Competitive Prices

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Lower Price but Same Superior Craftsmanship With the Garden Series Markers from Kincaid Plant Markers

Kincaid Plant MarkersIf you read our previous blog post, you read some of the comments from customers who were highly satisfied with their Kincaid Plant Markers. We love to hear those success stories and we are humbled by some of their glowing testimonies. These customers inspire us to keep looking toward ways in which we can meet customers’ needs for their garden while we also keep in mind that we have a diverse mix of customers with different economic challenges. Both companies and individuals have limited budgets and must choose their products wisely. We have crafted a new series of markers specifically for those who are on a budget, but still expect quality craftsmanship.

Until recently we’ve crafted only plant markers where both the posts and name plates were made of 100 percent stainless steel. These Signature Series and Collector Series markers offer strength and durability and the highest quality materials. Now we’d like to introduce to you our new Garden Series markers which are still of high quality, but that are a mix of stainless steel and galvanized steel.

Very affordable, but very reliable. That was our goal for our new Kincaid plant markers. Our new Garden Series markers have 13 gauge galvanized steel wire posts and 100 percent stainless steel name plates. You still get the same styles of plant markers that we offer now in our stainless steel markers.

Jamie, from Austin, comments “I love the way the stainless steel sparkles and shines in the sunlight” about our 100 percent stainless garden markers. Even with our more affordable markers, that sparkle will still shine from your nameplates which will remain 100 percent stainless. Patsy exclaimed that our original garden markers are “extremely sturdy” and that the “design is clever.” Well, Patsy, our new markers with stainless and galvanized steel are still extremely sturdy and we have the same clever designs. Florence says that her Kincaid plant markers were the “perfect height” and had “plenty of room for labels.”

We hope that our new addition at Kincaid Plant Markers helps make a difference for our customers who would like to purchase a few more, but must watch what they spend. Now you have a few different choices from our company. You can still purchase our 100 percent stainless steel markers, or our new Garden Series plant markers that have stainless steel plates and 13 gauge galvanized steel posts.

Whichever markers you choose, we promise that they will still have that strength and dependable quality that Kincaid products have always contained. We care about our products and customers, and we intend to keep on offering our best quality craftsmanship and variety for all your garden marker needs!

The Word is Out About Kincaid Plant Tags & Markers

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Earning a Spot on the Garden Watchdog Top 5 Plant Tags & Markers List

plant tags & markersWhen you craft something, you take pride in it. You pursue excellence in your craftsmanship for your customer’s approval and satisfaction. Here at Kincaid Plant Markers we think our plant tags & markers are the best, but it’s nice to have affirmation from those folks out there who have used them in all different weather, in all different circumstances and from all over the country and beyond.

So we did a little digging (pun intended) and found out what gardeners were saying about our plant tags & markers. Dave’s Garden is a website that lists nearly 8,000 mail order garden companies and lets customers review suppliers. For someone to take the time to write a review, you know that they probably have strong feelings—either good or bad. We were happy to find that out of our reviews in the last six months, all were positive. They weren’t negative (bless the blossoms) or even neutral (praise the plants), they were positive.

In the Garden Watchdog report, we read through to see just why they liked our products so that we can keep striving to make our plant tags & markers some of the very best. We felt proud to hear adjectives like the ones from “floralandhardy” in Canada who has 6,000 Kincaid markers in the garden which are “heavy duty, beautiful, resilient.” And we’re glad to know that even in their “harsh Canadian winters, with heavy snows, [they] very rarely need to straighten a marker in spring.” In Huntersville, NC, our plant markers survived the damage when a huge tree fell into a daylily bed and only one out of 30 markers was damaged.

Hearing phrases like the “best out there” and “gold standard” are enough to make us proud, but the “divingturtle’s” comment that they are “beyond a doubt, the best, most beautiful plant markers on the planet” was quite a compliment!

We were happy to find affirmations embedded in other affirmations, like the customer from Nebraska who said that our markers were highly recommended to her from a horticulturalist at the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum. The arboretum uses them for both their large and small plant projects.

It’s also pleasing for us to know that gardeners from coast to coast find us amiable and friendly. We strive to be both professional and friendly, helping our customers find the right plant tags & markers for their different gardens and plants. A gardener in Huntersville, NC thinks we’re “the best people to interact with” and another from Del Mar, CA asserts that we are “very friendly and responsive, answering questions.” We’re glad to be of service.

Thanks to all of our customers who continue to order our plant tags & markers and find us worthy enough to receive an A+ (or “uber-positive” from one customer)! We will keep our product quality top-notch and keep answering any questions you may have about our Kincaid Plant Markers products.

Labels for Greenhouses Can Follow Your Little Sprouts Outdoors

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Start Your Plants Inside With Labels for Greenhouses

labels for greenhousesMarkers that are placed in the open garden must be resilient to harsh sunshine, drenching rains, violent hail and a whole list of other enemies including your pet dog. But, plant labels aren’t only for the outdoors. Some people choose to use them in their indoor potted plants, especially if their plants begin their life in a greenhouse. Labels for greenhouses help keep your plant varieties sorted. Tiny sprouts look similar and need good labels and these labels can then be transferred to the outdoors with the plants.

Not Too Hot, Not Too Cold— Just Right

If you plan on using a greenhouse to start your plants or to raise plants all year around, you need to facilitate the perfect atmosphere for their healthy growth. Ideally, gardeners suggest that the greenhouse stays between 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit and that the humidity should be fifty percent or higher. In nature, plants don’t stand still. Gentle and violent winds keep stems vibrating throughout the day. Your greenhouse needs to offer your plants a little of this moving exercise with air circulation. Adequate air circulation could come in the form of a few fans or air vents in the roof and sides of the greenhouse. It will start to get the plants ready for Mother Nature, but it will also cool air that gets too warm for the plants and it will reduce chances for mold and mildew on plant leaves and insects who might enjoy your year-round warm and damp atmosphere.

Getting Acclimated

Plants usually need to be hardened off before a permanent move to the outdoors. Most plants might need two to three weeks of temporary outdoor time in order to get used to all of the natural wind, humidity and heat in the yard. Gradually exposing the plants to the outdoor elements will help make the move from greenhouse to garden more bearable and less shocking for the plant’s leaves, flowers and roots.

Labels for greenhouses obviously don’t need to be hardened off, but can they withstand the impact of those same elements of wind, humidity, heat and more over time? If you have the right kind of plant markers, your labels for greenhouses and labels for gardens can be one and the same and will last for ages. Markers that are 100 percent stainless steel are strong and will survive without rusting or tarnishing.

Our Customers Know Our Labels Stand Out

We are so happy at Kincaid Plant Markers when customers write to us to tell us how satisfied they are with our products. One anonymous customer posted the following satisfaction:

I had used other markers previously for my daylilies. They rusted out and were hard to read. I have had the above for several years and they are just as clear today as the original date. No rust. Great product.

Whether you use our products indoors or outdoors, we hope that our plant labels will always assist you in your gardening. If you’re ready for a label that will last a lifetime, our Kincaid plant markers will go to work for you.