Karl's Garden Blog

I love the planter tags that came with my nursery trays, but there were too few included to even mark each set of nine pots! And the Jiffy Pots container didn’t include any, so with four trays full of seedlings, I’ve been struggling to find solutions that let me keep everything organized and track each planting batch.

Last night, my milk went bad and I ended up pouring half of the small bottle down the drain. Then it struck me — the plastic is nearly the same as the plastic in the planter tags! I bet I could use it! Whipping out my trusty box knife, I quickly decapitated the milk bottle and slit it to end up with a flat sheet.

Milk bottle with the top removed and the middle split.

Cutting that flat sheet into strips produced nicely sized tags for writing.

Then cutting those strips at an angle produces nearly the same thing that you’d buy at the store.

Cut the middle at an angle

They go easily in the planters, and since they’re food safe, they’re unlikely to leak anything bad.

Milk bottle tags in use!

I like to track a lot of information about plants. I want to know the planting date, the date any transplants were made, and what “series” it was … how many times I planted each thing and maybe even why. I cut my strips a little wide so that I could write all that down and still have space to spare. I used a regular old sharpie permanent marker to write the name of the plant and the other information I track.