Homemade Plant Tags for Hybridizing Plants

Last year I began to experiment with hybridizing.  I’m hoping that the plants I cross together result in something really nice but it takes a few years to get something from the crosses.  So far I’ve experimented with daylilies, echinacea, and irises.  Hostas are on my list but the deer keep getting to the flowers before they’ve had a chance to produce seed.  One of the issues I’ve run across is labeling.  It’s very easy to get mixed up on your crosses.  I came up with an idea recently to make my own plant tags/labels that I can put on each crossed flower.  Here’s what I did:

The plant label is made from a plastic plant tag I cut into a 2 inch rectangle.  I punched a hole in it with a standard hole puncher and added a bit of garden twine to hang it on the plant.  If you don’t have a plant tag to cut like I did you could use any sort of plastic from yogurt cups, to milk jugs, to mini-blinds.  Just cut them to an appropriate size that leaves you plenty of room to write the pod parent and the pollen parent for record keeping.  After the seeds form you’ll be able to tell which cross was which!