An Herb Garden Label Inspires Research in Your Outdoor Classroom

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Inspiring Students Through Their Senses With an Herb Garden Label

herb garden labelGardens are springing up all over the country in backyards and schoolyards. Hobbyists, cooks and educators are pushing seeds into the soft earth and gently patting nutritious soil around roots. Many schools are planning their outdoor classrooms, gardens that will be planted during the spring school year, tended over the summer and harvested during the following school year in late summer. One joy of herbs in the classroom is that they can be harvested all throughout the growing season. They may be the first plant children can harvest and the first one they can research with the help of an herb garden label.

By labeling herbs, the students see the unique scientific differences between the plants. Not all green leaves are created equally. They see different leaf characteristics—shapes, texture, scent, edges and size. When a plant has a name it has an identity. Just like Brayden is different from Brian in your classroom, Rosemary and Lavender are different in your garden.

An herb garden label helps expand vocabulary, language and research. How did Sage get its name? Herbs have interesting histories of their medicinal and culinary uses over the centuries. An herb garden label might inspire students to research how these herbs got their interesting names. Students will learn name origins, definitions and history as they go through herb garden label after label.

Comparing and contrasting the herbs can be great fun when the students find out how some herbs were used to heal Civil War soldiers and others cured snakebite. You can even have a school cook-off using the herbs and other produce grown in your garden. Describing the radically different flavors and scents of herbs helps a child’s vocabulary grow.

Your school, classroom or homeschool herb garden can be a various assortment of aromatic and tasty fragrances or it can be based on a theme. The National Gardening Association suggests some kid-friendly garden themes if you’re just starting an herb garden. You might plant herbs like rosemary, hyssop and tansy if you’ve been reading Peter Rabbit stories. Oregano, basil, garlic and parsley make for a great pizza or spaghetti garden. You can pretend to be the first colonists who picked thyme and savory to add to their feasts. You can also whip up some refreshments like peppermint, chamomile or lemon balm tea.

Kincaid Plant Markers can be your partner in education as our plant labels help your students learn research skills combined with the life skills of cultivating foods, healthy eating practices and cooking. An herb garden label will help differentiate between plants and can produce a savory appetite for learning more about the amazing ways plants have been able to heal wounds, save lives, inspire love and poetry, change a person’s behavior, improve a person’s beauty and satisfy the taste buds of humans over the centuries.

Define Your Edible Landscape With Plant Labels

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plant markersPlant labels can highlight the yearly perennials or the delicious edibles that you have tucked between your perennials or carefully lined up in your edible garden. Creating an edible landscape in your backyard is beneficial to you and branches out to benefit others.

How can your edible landscape benefit others? You can donate food out of your garden to a local food pantry or pass food on to a few neighbors and relatives. But your garden can help even beyond that. By planting right outside your door, you can decrease the demand of shipping those foods across the nation, reducing air pollution.

Homegrown foods benefit the environment and your health. Produce that is plucked and that is eaten almost immediately is packed with the most nutrition. When edible shipments must traverse the country, they lose nutrients along the way. They may also be packed in pesticides and other chemicals while you might not use any in your gardens.

To transform your yard into an edible landscape you don’t have to uproot your current plants and start your design from scratch. Think about what you like to eat and what you could see working in your garden. Once you have a list started, start thinking about the needs of those plants. Do they prefer very well-drained warm spots or do they like more moist and shady spots? Start plugging those plants into the right spots in your yard based on drainage areas and hours of sunlight.

You could tear up your grass and create an edible oasis or you could use your current flower beds and add borders of curly-edged purple and green lettuce or low-growing herbs. Vines of clematis could be replaced by grapevines or other climbing edibles. Tomatoes and marigolds can be friends as well as roses and garlic. Books on companion plants can help you decide how to group your edibles and non-edibles.

Some gardeners design their garden so that something is always in bloom. You could fill in a sparse-looking edible garden with blooming plants that fill in spots after a plant has been harvested or before it matures. And many edibles have beautiful flowers, too. As your edibles bloom and are harvested you can pull your plant markers and plant labels out of the yard until next season or you can leave it as a reminder of your yard’s great diversity throughout the seasons.

While they are resilient and resistant to weather damage, plant labels on Kincaid Plant Markers can be easily changed. If you have the Brother P-Touch Label Printer, you simply re-print a new sticker for your garden marker. Or, if you use the Pro-Line HP marker, you can use mineral spirits to rub it off and then re-write a new plant’s name. So, take some of your hard gardening work and let it come back to you. Let your plant labels lead you to good nutrition and the anticipation of the next delicacy your garden will produce.

Gardeners Use Markers for Peonies to Display and Inform

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markers for peoniesSpring and summer are show time for gardeners, especially flower gardeners. Careful planning and loving labor invested in the fall and early parts of spring burst forth into glorious display as the weather warms. Some of the first stars to appear onstage are peonies. These lush plants with large blooms make a splashy entrance and invite expectation of the later flowers to follow.

Technically known as paeonia suffruticosa, peonies explode into bloom near the end of spring and will produce fabulous flowers for the next six weeks. Each individual blossom will last about seven days. Peonies are perennials meaning they will be back year after year producing generous blooms, gentle fragrance and lush green leaves. The flowers make a terrific staple in a cut flower garden though you should avoid cutting more than one-third to one-half of blooms so that your plant will continue to produce new blooms. Place markers for peonies in your garden to identify each variety.

Peonies also appear to advantage along a border since even after their blooms disappear their green foliage is attractive. Since they come in a variety of colors (with the exception of blues) you can have fun creating a visual display in the yard and in a vase indoors. Just be sure to plant them in a location with partial to full sun and soil that drains well.

Garden peonies grow as bushes and reach about two to four feet in height while the tree variety can climb up to 10 feet tall. These flowers prefer cool northern climates. Winter cold will help produce showy blooms in spring. So if you live in an area hospitable to these beauties, make the most of it.

The plants are generally disease and pest-resistant. However, if you notice problems you need only remove affected leaves and try an antifungal treatment. Ladybugs are your friend in this matter. Welcome them into your garden.

The most popular varieties of peonies are colorful and hardy. You may want to try several kinds and place markers for peonies in front of each variety to see which you like best.

 

  • Early blooming hybrids will produce a single bloom on each stem. Look for Do Tell and Coral Charm
  • Intersectional peonies are a mix of tree and bush varieties. Popular choices are Cora Louise and Garden Treasure
  • Lactiflora are the peonies most popular at local plant nurseries. These will produce multiple blooms per stem. Dark Purple Silk is a striking and popular choice
  • If you’re game to try the tree peony consider planting Black Dragon Brocade

Peonies will thrive and yield blooms for many years with little attention. In early spring feed soil with a fertilizer without too much nitrogen as heavy nitrogen can lead to plant weakness and fewer blooms. After 10 years if you notice not as many blossoms appearing it’s probably time to dig up the roots and divide the plant. When you find a new home for your root ball be sure to use markers for peonies to identify which varieties are located where in your garden plan.

When choosing markers for peonies or any of your garden flowers, take a look at Kincaid Plant Markers. Like the long-lasting peony, our markers are durable year after year. They are the choice markers of expert gardeners and hobbyists interested in sharing the intricacies of gardening with others.

Markers for Daylilies Recognize Each Beauty in the Garden

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Perennials are like older children who can finally tie their own shoes, put on their own clothes and fix themselves a bowl of cereal. They can take care of themselves—much better than those more fragile annuals. They show up in the garden at just the right season and sometimes surprise us when we haven’t paid enough attention.

Some gardeners like a variety of perennials interspersed throughout their yard. Other gardeners have a favorite species they like to focus on. Rose, iris, wildflower and daylily gardens are a few examples of these flowers that have many different varieties. In these gardens with a flower focus, garden markers can help identify the subtle and not so subtle differences between the different cultivars.

markers for dayliliesDaylilies are a favorite perennial that thrive in full sun even though they can grow and bloom in partial shade, too. They don’t care much for wet feet, but they are great for reducing erosion when planted on a slope. Daylilies come in a variety of heights and colors. Daylily gardeners suggest that you take notice of a daylily’s height before planting and realize that the listed height of the daylily is the height from the ground to the top of its bloom.

The clumping, grass-like foliage of daylilies makes them a great filler plant in a flower bed. They can help hide the legs of other less leafy plants and soften the area around a woody-stemmed plant. Those clumps and bright blooms are also perfect for hillsides or slopes where it’s difficult to grow grass. The daylilies help slow erosion and provide a colorful hillside where you don’t have to maneuver a mower.

If you don’t have a yard to play in, don’t feel that you’ve lost contact with daylilies. They will thrive in pots like the annuals that are cultivated for a one-year stint on your patio. Daylilies are not usually thought of as a container plant, but it works. If you have a few from your hillside or lawn to spare you can experiment with them in patio containers.

If you are a member of the American Hemerocallis Society (AHS), a society for daylily collectors, or just have a passion for daylilies, your garden would benefit by having garden markers for daylilies. Markers for daylilies could include whatever information you would find helpful for each type of cultivar. Your markers could include physical features about the daylily or common information like the daylily’s registered name, the daylily’s hybridizer’s name, and the year it was introduced.

If you have a passion for roses, irises, daylilies or other flowers that have many cultivars, then sturdy markers like the ones we create at Kincaid Plant Markers can create a record and history for your garden. Markers for daylilies and other blooms will help keep your garden organized for you and those who visit your field of blooms.

Ways to Mark Plants So Your Spring Bulbs Will Last Another Season

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Bulbs 1Have you ever been so consumed in your plans to expand an existing garden or build a new one that you started digging before you thought about what could have been under the ground? Just as you start to dig you find one of those little teardrop-shaped bulbs that have already spent their flowers in the spring or summer and were cut back to the ground weeks ago. With the many ways to mark plants in your garden, you won’t have to worry about slicing a perfectly good tulip bulb in two!

In your zest to get digging in your garden this summer, watch out for your azaleas, daffodils, hyacinths, lilies and tulips. Some of those creatures are already poking their green-tipped noses through the snow or moist soil. They might be easy to spot in the late spring, but after the leaves have turned yellow and you have cut the withering foliage back to the ground, there is no mark for their existence unless you have some ways to mark plants in your yard.

Best Location for Bulbs

Bulbs love the sun, or at least half of them do—the top halves. They tend to do best when their blossoms have sun and their roots are in the shade–shady feet and sunny tops. While most packages that you purchase will have instructions on how to plant your bulbs, some gardeners generally suggest planting your bulbs 3 inches below the surface and a foot apart.

Stakes Mark the Spot

After you put your bulbs below the surface, you might want to mark where your Easter blooms will appear and re-appear each year. Plant markers will keep you from destroying your bulbs that are at rest and markers will help you anticipate the return of those perennial blooms each year.

Artificial Cold

You may wonder if your tulips aren’t coming back because you really did slice them in two, but there are other reasons they may not have produced for you. Bulbs have to go through the seasons. They need very cold temperatures before they will bloom again. If you live in a warmer climate you may need to dig up your bulbs after the blossoms have faded and the green leaves have turned yellow and limp. You can take them inside and put them in a cooler. This transition will simulate some winter weather and provide some artificial cold. One month before you want your plant to bloom, you should take it out of the cooler. Then you’re ready to put it in the ground and mark it with a plant marker.

Kincaid Plant Markers can help you find ways to mark plants so that even in their off-season they are not forgotten. Whether you choose to print your labels or hand-write them, our stainless steel plant markers will guard your blooms for each season.

Planning Your Garden and Plant Markers for Perennials

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Garden 8On those rare winter days when the ground is soft enough to drive a plant marker into it, you may be daydreaming of your plans for this year’s perennial garden. If you’re planning on digging a new garden in your yard, you can start planning and imagining your location, plant design and species list now. Once your list of plants has been established you can get your plant markers for perennials ready to stand alongside your tall and small, leafy and woody, colorful and foliage-fascinating plants. Planning early means that you get your markers ordered now and can plant your plant markers for perennials on the same day you put your new additions into the yard. But, let’s start at the beginning with just where you want to put that new garden.

The Perfect Vantage Point

Where do you like to sit in your yard? What do you love to see from that vantage point? What MORE would you like to see? Planning a garden means imagining it from the angles where you and others will see it most. Will you most likely see it from your favorite porch rocking chair? Do you want it to be subtle or breathtaking when people pull in your driveway, walk up to your porch or walk out onto your patio? What about the dog days of summer when you’ll view your perennials most often through the window that separates the heat from your air-conditioned home?

After considering the different vantage points from where you’ll most likely enjoy your perennial garden, you can choose which plants should be in the “front” of that vantage point and which ones will be in the back. Your garden should look appealing from all sides, but make sure that it is most flattering from those popular vantage points.

Room to Grow in a Garden for all Seasons

One very interesting garden tip suggests digging your garden wider than you think you’ll need. Imagine your perfect-sized garden and then make it bigger. Remember that landscaping stones or a dirt edge will be on the perimeter of your garden, so always imagine a foot or more past where you want to fit in your plants.

Another helpful tip in planting your perennial garden is to take your total number of plants that you will be purchasing and divide that number by thirds. Each third should bloom in spring, summer and fall. Careful planning can give your yard color and texture just where you want it all year long.

Kincaid Plant Markers are built to last with our 100 percent stainless steel design. Investing in perennials saves time that you might have been taking to plant new flowers each year and saves money from year to year. Our plant markers for perennials will stand tall with your long-lasting perennials. The perennials will be thriving while the plant markers will be surviving. Together they will blend and define your yard and make it a beautiful and interesting space.

Garden Markers Can be Traditional or Trendy

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Are you a traditional gardener or a trendsetter? Here are a few trendy ideas for your 2015 garden:Garden 7

  • Easy-care Gardening
    Why do it the hard way if there are easier options out there? That seems to be the way many gardeners are now thinking. With so much new technology touching the lives of our plants, many gardeners are choosing plants that have been engineered to grow and survive in multiple conditions. Plants that can tolerate drought or flood, don’t need pesticides or fertilizers or grow quickly and produce larger blooms or more edible material are all plants that may be more attractive for purchase this year.
  • Making the Outdoors Look Like the Indoors
    Having a furnished patio allows you to add another room to your house. So much outdoor furniture is specifically made to withstand the weather. Fabrics for cushions and construction materials of couches have become more weather-tolerant, mildew-resistant or have some longevity superpower attached to them. Tables, grills, heating lamps, fireplaces, lights, food prep areas and more all have designs for the person who wants to extend their living space out the back door.
  • Food Plots for Insects
    Bird feeding stations have been around for years, but welcome the age of planting an area in your yard to fuel the bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. Nectar or pollinator gardens are increasing As bee-keeping seems to also be trending, so are places to attract those pollinators and welcome them to a hive. Gardens of red blossoms attract those hummers and wet sandy soil or other moist material can produce “puddling” spots for butterflies that want a sip of water to wash down their nectar intake from your gardens.

What will be your trendy take for 2015? Perhaps you’re satisfied with what you have right now. Perhaps you’ll inspire others to start a trend of using personalized garden markers like the Kincaid Plant Markers in their yard. With the Brother P-Touch Label printer you can print out whatever you’d like for your garden markers or with the Markal HP marker you can print directly on your plates with your own hand. Your garden markers can include a common name, Latin name, year, dedication, quote or any other personal touches you’d like to give them. Or your garden markers can be personalized with your handwriting which will then be mingled among your gardening handiwork.

If you purchase the plants deemed as trendy for 2015 and you create personalized labels for them, you can always erase or re-type and re-print those garden marker labels in 2016 when that plant may be replaced by the next new thing in garden plants. Whether your garden is trendy or traditional, your garden markers can stay up to date when you are in charge of what they say.

On the Wall, in the Air and in the Ground With Steel Plant Markers

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A recent article in Mother Earth News dares you to think outside the rectangle. Yes it’s “think outside the box”, but when you are thinking of alternatives to the common garden patch you might be thinking outside the rectangle. People in all spaces and places love to garden. Those who live in apartments might not have the luxury of a patch of earth to dig in and some gardeners may decide they have seen their glory days of digging and tilling huge gardens and opt for small potted patio gardens. No matter the size of the garden, steel plant markers will fit in perfectly.Hanging Baskets 1

Thinking vertical can help you if you lack gardening space. If you live in an apartment or home where you just don’t have the soil or the room to grow, you can gain space by using vertical objects like ladders with wooden boxes on the stairs, old wooden dressers with drawers pulled half-way out or wooden pallets. Take care to not put your plants in chemically-treated wood. Pallets may be marked with an HT to announce that they were heat treated rather than chemically treated.

Hanging baskets are another option to vertical gardening. A string of plants cascading down from a porch or patio ceiling adds depth and intimacy in your space. You can even use steel plant markers in hanging baskets when the markers are light, yet durable. Shorter plant stakes can fit snugly into hanging baskets, planted pots and any window box-like container.

Another interesting idea is to use a hay bale as your garden. There is no soil needed, no heavy weed-eating to do and there is a garden contained within one raised bed. The raised bed also reduces back strain while gardening. Because straw bales produce heat as they slowly decompose, gardeners can extend their growing season by planting in a warm hay bale. Each season you’ll need to get a new hay bale to use, but it will keep your plants from getting rot or disease from the moist decaying straw.

Hay bales might be a more attractive raised bed because there is no hauling of dirt involved in these gardens. No time is spent constructing a structure for the raised garden, no dirt has to be hauled in and then put in the beds. The bales can be put anywhere you find a small rectangular spot—just outside your back door, on a cement driveway or as an additional interesting fixture in your yard among your traditional ground gardens.

With the steel plant markers we produce at Kincaid Plant Markers you can choose the right height of stainless steel posts, perfect angle of plant label plate and lettering that is just the right size for your plant container. Thinking outside of the rectangle can give a lift to your garden and increase your gardening space.

 

You Can’t Buy Your Garden Markers Too Soon When You Can Start Your Growing Season Early

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Winter Garden 1Even though the calendar tells us that we’re still in winter, our intense summer gardening season is on its way. For some, the gardening may slow but never stop. For those in cooler climates there are ways in which you can extend your growing season and start your plants before the next page on the calendar flips. With your early plant planning, it’s not too early to order some markers for your new additions.

Wrapped Up in Warmth

Plants can grow for longer periods in the winter or can get a very early late winter start when they’re wrapped up in cloches or in materials that allow the sun’s life-giving rays to penetrate while keeping out the winter frost and winds. Cloches are like mini-greenhouses that allow young plants to grow in colder weather. A box of wood or other material that is covered with clear plastic or glass makes a great solar frame to warm your plants. Plants can get a head start weeks before other plants that await the right air temperature and warmth for vigorous growth.

Bottles, Boxes and Cages—Oh, My!

Before you clean out your garage, you might salvage some materials that could make a cold frame or cloche for your plants. Frames can be built from household materials like shower doors and old windows. Some people have even used old cardboard boxes covered with bubble wrap to shelter and nurture their plants with warmth. Using a substantial wood frame with a clear roof is reliably sturdy, but you can use lighter boxes, too. As long as your lighter boxes are securely fastened to the ground with heavy stones or stakes, you can use materials like cardboard or tomato cages that are wrapped in plastic sheeting. Some gardeners paint bottles with a sun-absorbing black color and then secure them together in a protective grouping around plants.

On Your Mark…

With plants on a head start to their big growing season, you can plan what new garden markers you might need this year. Winter is a great time to not only plan your garden and start nurturing some tender young shoots, but to decide what styles of garden markers you would like. Garden markers come in different heights and the plates can be put at different angles. Marker stakes can be slender or thick. You can choose what you’ll put on your labels and whether you want to print your labels with a label maker or print them by hand.

At Kincaid Plant Markers we offer you different styles of garden markers so that you can choose the style that best fits your garden and your individual plants. Recently, we have added the Markal Paint Pen Pro-Line HP Series and self-write labels with UV covers to our products. You can choose between the professional look of labels printed with the Brother P-Touch Label Printer or you can choose to script your labels with your own hand. While snowflakes may be falling now, it won’t be long before a white flurry of tree petals fill the skies.

Using Metal Garden Markers in Your Landscape Design

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Garden 6When you plan a new garden or gather ideas for re-designing an existing garden, there are many things to consider. Location, color, height, depth, scented or un-scented, free-flowing or structured, edible or ornamental are all choices and possibilities. You can also consider the type of metal garden markers that would best fit the style of your landscape. Different plate angles, labels and sizes of markers are all things to consider with your landscape design.

Good gardeners are often experimenters. They know that sometimes you can just stick a plant in the ground and it will take care of itself. It might not have enough sun, but it will still work in the shade. The soil may be a little too damp, but it will survive with a few less blossoms. But when you have the time to actually plan a new little garden patch, you can use location and other elements to set up the most hardy and healthy garden.

You can ask yourself what plants will flourish the best in your region’s climate zone. What plants will flourish the best in my yard’s soil so that I don’t have to amend it much or at all? If it’s in the sun or shade, which plants produce best in those conditions? These are a few of the common questions gardeners consider before planting.

Another planning consideration is examining your yard’s natural features before purchasing your plants. Does your yard have steppes or slopes or is it flat? Plants that cascade are perfect for hiding old retaining walls or give interest to sloping yards. Shrubs, ornamental grasses and flowers with extensive root systems may also aid yards with slopes as they can hold down the soil and reduce erosion.

Do you have an abundance of purple blooms in your yard, but no yellow? Color combinations are interesting in gardens. You may choose to cluster cool-toned blooms like blue and purple or warm-toned blooms like yellow and red. The placement of these cool tones and warm tones in a garden also makes a difference in the atmosphere of your garden. Exuberant warm tones can be “toned down” by placing them in back rows, while cool tones can create a calming effect when clustered up close to you and the edge of the border.

Once you’ve designed your garden, it’s time to choose your perfect style of metal garden markers. Petite plants may look better with more slender and petite plant markers, while large full plants may need more substantial markers in order to stay rooted. Stroll through your pathways and imagine glancing down to read the names of your plants. This can help you determine whether you want plates that angle behind or in front of your metal garden marker posts.

The classic 100 percent stainless steel plant markers of Kincaid Plant Markers would fit the style of any garden. Whether you choose a formal English garden or a natural wildflower garden, our metal garden markers will complement your various flowers with a simple silver style. Signs with too much ornamentation may make a garden look cluttered or distract from your garden plants. We have designed a slender durable sign that will never rust, tarnish or crumble under the forces of nature or time.