Plant labels and printing

[Mike S]

Thanks everyone that gives me plenty to think about I will certainly be investing in a Brother not sure on which model yet,again many thanks

[spiersj]

Brother PT 2730 for me

[Phil_SK]

There was a time when I would remove the labels that came with plants and replace them with my handwritten T-labels in order to avoid the 'graveyard' effect that can happen with big labels in a collection of little plants. When I came close to running out, I had a rethink and decided that I wanted to move to printed labels. Having seen something similar being used for plants on another C&S forum, I decided to have a go at printing onto paper (with my trusty-ish, ancient laser printer) and laminating them with standard laminating pouches. I already had my collection in a spreadsheet and the software (then OpenOffice Calc, now LibreOffice Calc; MS Excel similarly) is able to turn rows into what it thinks are address labels for sticking on envelopes. After lots of research and endless fiddling I managed to persuade it to print certain bits as tiny labels on plain A4. When I realised that, if I used a tiny font, I could cram loads of info on without making the labels much bigger I ended up including the fields: genus, species, field number, habitat locality, accession number, acquired from and 'notes' which is a miscellaneous rag-bag of info on the spreadsheet that doesn't belong anywhere else. The fonts are size 8, 6 and 4 but OK for my eyesight. The fiddly bit is cutting them out and then trapping them in laminating pouches without them jumping everywhere, to which there's a knack! Finally, they need cutting out again.

I have a habit of redoing labels - that misspelling of Acanthocalycium is crying out to be redone - or if I find out more info on a plant. I no longer discard original labels, just snapping and burying them. Some plants must have 4 or 5 labels by now!
Having got the hang of it, I now find it quicker than doing labels by hand and for swaps and sales plants I do a simplified version that's simply typed then copied&pasted if needed rather than being done from a spreadsheet.

For me, their great benefit is their cheapness, small size and, so far, durability. If water got in they'd fail but I haven't seen any look even slightly dodgy after maybe 6 years. If they were going to leak I think they would've by now. The downside is that it makes sense to do them in batches, so i have to buy more plants to make it worth doing a batch

[Aiko]

I also have a Brother label printer. I buy the cartridges second hand. These are the original cartridges, so I know good quality, and lasting well in sun and water for many years. I don't know if the replicated cartridges are as good.

I also keep the old labels from plants. Just nice to keep them around. I bury all the labels into the ground anyway, so no graveyard look. Just a bit is sticking out of the soil, easy enough for me to grab them and read whenever I want to.

[Mike S]

I have ordered my new Brother label printer I have gone for the PT-P750W ,can't wait to start printing,again thank you all for the info.

[PeterW]

In the past I have had terrible troubles printing neat labels. In the Spanish sun ink fades, labels have turned black, have fallen off, plastic labels disintegrate into fragments within months. I now have a system that works. My labeller is a Brother P-touch, GL-H105 (GL stands for Gardening Labeller).



The ink is totally impervious to the sun, the labels stick really well, the white background stays white (but you can choose other colours). I stick them to Alitag aluminium labels. Now my labels look good and last indefinitely.

[Chris43]

I use a PT-700 with tapes that are at least half price, and these have lasted 5 years so far without any apparent difference in life or appearance.

[StevenT]

I'm with Phil SK on this and I use a printer and laminator. It's the only way I can get all the info I want (and as I like data, that can be a lot ) onto a label (and I didn't need to buy anything extra to make them .) Also like Phil I don't like the 'graveyard' effect of sideways labels - or tilting my head to read them!

I use a word processor so all special symbols, fonts and sizes are available and I keep all labels in one document so I can easily go to each one using the Find feature.
My printer is an ordinary HP ink jet and I've found that the ink in original cartridges doesn't fade - even after 5 years (so far), but the ink in refills does fade quickly in only a few months.
I've found its best to use heavyweight (250 microns) pouches as you get stiffer and therefore flat labels.
I've also made them for plants outside in the garden, which 3 years later are still intact.

Steven

[Chris L]

I have ordered my new Brother label printer I have gone for the PT-P750W ,can't wait to start printing,again thank you all for the info.

Find the max length of tape you can print and then fill it with "labels". Mine will print a 30cm strip of labels.

Don't do them one at a time as it wastes tape. There is a 2.5cm gap between the cutter and the print head.

[DaveW]

Speaking from memory Steven, the hand held Brother label printers only use their limited inbuilt fonts, but the plug in Brother computer printers use their built in software's fonts and symbols, giving many more variations, including printing in italics, which if you want to be pedantic botanical names should be written in.

Mine is the old PT 1230 PC which is now superseded and just prints half inch tape that just fits vertical labels, but other models will print more than one tape width.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXNvdIwjC0A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXG5bss-yCE

http://www.brother-usa.com/labelprinter ... tware.aspx