Sharpie IDea !

Just found the latest in sharpies at walmart - mini sharpies with hooks at the end, so they can be carried or hooked anywhere and everywhere! I plan to hang a few in strategic garden spots, and use them - to write on the foliage of iris plants as they bloom, especially the ones that are all growing together. Wherever there is a blooming stalk I plan to write the name on it, and hopefully this will make the mess easier to sort out.

(I've been doing this with tulips that I want to replant also. I need to find some kind of surface that I can write on to mark down my spur of the moment garden plans as they come to me. Right now I am taking an empty white plastic container and some white plastic drinking cups to stick on stakes here and there. Perhaps someone has a more elegant idea to suggest?
Sharon

I'm the last person to suggest elegant ideas, Sharon, but I smiled when I read your post because I think there are Sharpie markers in the pocket of every pair of jeans I own.

When I'm doing major digging in my beds, like hundreds at a time, I use a trailer cart attached to the lawn tractor as my 'mobile office'. I finally learned to attach some stick-on snappy thingies - sorry, I know there's a real term, but I can't think of it - to the side of the trailer to hold Sharpies and other tools. Think of the wall hooks they make that hold brooms, where you just sort of pop the broom handle in the little slot. Office supply places have similar things for pens, and - as long as the trailer's clean - they'll stay on really well. So my trailer cart now has a row of markers, plus some hooks for the hand tools I use most. Before, they were always getting lost in the bottom of the cart.

If your projects tend to be smaller you could do the same thing with a bucket, attaching Sharpies to the side.

If you want permanent caches of markers here and there as your post suggests, you might want to cut some short lengths of PVC pipe and stick them in the ground. They make caps for the pipe, and if you buy the caps one size too big they'll just sit on top and keep rain out, but not be hard to remove as needed. I think Fusion spraypaint works on PVC so you could camoflauge it......hey, this is almost approaching elegant after all. :)



katie