How to Make Canning Lid Plant Markers
Plant markers have been handy and important for me in my previous years of growing food in the gardens. So many of my newly transplanted vegetables always look so much alike. After planting a single garden in numerous rows, I often forget what I planted where. Sometimes I need to know where my Roma tomatoes ended, and my Homestead tomatoes began. Or how about direct seed sowing. Yeah, I will forget instantly where the row is before it germinated and don’t want to wait to find out at harvest time.
Now in the past years, I have been using and reusing a large package of those typical white plastic plant markers that you can write on. These have served me well for the last five years. But I recently have noticed how I am slowly losing more, and more markers. They get lost along the way and, more often than not, destroyed my tillers, hoeing, and just daily work in the garden. So it was time to either buy more or better yet make some from materials that I have lying around the house, which means free.
How to make your own plant markers.
First, gather up all your used metal canning jar lids. These seemed to be the perfect material to use since I needed to recycle them anyway. And F.Y.I, it is not recommended to reuse canning lids for a second time when either a water bath or pressure canning.
Next, collect wooden sticks. These sticks do not have to be purchased. They can be from your yard; fallen branches or twigs at least 1/2 inch thick. I happened to have these wooden dowel sticks laying around that worked well.
And lastly, you will need a glue gun with some glue sticks. I have found this to be the easiest and most secure way to attach everything. Just glue your sticks to the back of each canning lid. I like having the white part of the lids as my writing surface. It gives a clean surface and is cute and neat looking with the rubber seal as a border.
And when you are ready to use a sharpie and write your plant’s name on the lid and put it in the garden. There you go, perfectly free and useful plant markers. Also, they took all of 15 minutes to gather and put together – a very short craft project, in my opinion.
Recipes to use canning lids first
I will have to update this post on how they hold up throughout the year and see if they are reusable for a second season.