I haven’t use these but amazon has the one’s with uv protection.
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Yes Amazon is a good source - the name is Garden Marker Pen. Here is another place selling them.
http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/garden-marker-pen/labels-pens
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AM Leonard sells them to. Also the paint markers work well to.
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I’ve mentioned this pen before,but it’s going about two years on plastic labels and bark and it’s still very readable.
It’s the IDenti Pen by Sakura Color Products.I just bought a set of 8 different colors.I like black though. Brady
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Another thing that lasts is securing the aluminum labels with rubber electric tape directly over the label, bending the inner edge of label (the side with the hole for wire) over the small wood inside (before) the graft. Use the wire just to loosely assure some insurance when the tape eventually fails. When you rely on the wire the labels often either girdle over time or get blown off by the wind- the rubber tape solves both problems. The downside it that they are harder to read when you bend them longitudinally so they can be taped securely.
I tried to attach a link to the boxes of tags sold by AMLEO, but it didn’t work for some reason. 500 tags and wires for about 60 bucks.
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Although I’ve not tried them the Sharpie “EXTREME” markers have UV fade protection built in. I have a bunch of standard sharpies I normally use but they will fade after a while. The Extreme markers are supposed to be better.
You can buy them at Target or Wal Mart so may be worth a try.
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Thanks Alan,your description gives me a picture that I think is accurate.If I have it correct,the end of the tag curls around the branch a little and is held there,somewhat rigid by the tape. Brady
Are these the tags?
http://www.amleo.com/aluma-boss-double-faced-aluminum-tags/p/VP-OAT/
I think so- they sell two types, one is pre-wired and the other comes with a bundle of wires to do yourself. The latter is somewhat more durable.
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I use the markers that you buy to mark cattle tags. They are meant for plastic and we have cattle that have tags we marked 10 years ago. We use the Alflex brand but I am sure there are others.
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Grafting wood from species that come out of dormancy early need to be harvested and stored before later ones. I believe if you harvest J. Plums right before they start to leaf out they continue and leaf out during refrigeration. They are the only species that I’ve had leaf out in the fridge.
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The challenges of getting the early season pears pollinated. Until this year my earliest blooming pears were Orient and Kieffer and then came the Hood pear which actually started flowering about four days earlier than these two. Regardless there seems to be enough overlap for all three to set fruit (we will soon see). My observations watching the flowers over the last few days is that the high temps of about the mid 60’s just does not get many pollinating insects stirred up enough to frequent the blooms. I have seen a few tiny looking insects, a few that looked like some type of fly, and of all things a couple of red wasp going to the flowers. All of these looked like they only move around in a small area of the tree so I’m going to sprinkle in more scions around hoping my cross pollination improves. I think that I’m heading in the right direction with this problem and if you have any ideas don’t hesitate to comment.
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Someone used to sell a product to spray on plants, alleging it attracted bees
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Must be honey! 
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Honey will attract honeybees but not necessarily to the flowers.
“Bad” smelling blooms often seem to require flies for cross pollination. The old method was to hang putrid meat to attract flies- I have no idea if that is effective for that but I’m certain it would attract raccoons.
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Most flowers have at least a decent smell but the pear flower is pretty bad. I should be thankful that the fly’s help me out when no others are willing. They might travel longer distances than I think but most look like they stay fairly close to one limb or to one tree.
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Yeah, it’s amazing how stinky pear blossom are. Smell like stinky feet.
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Asian pears and chestnuts are the worst. Chestnuts worst of all because they are so big they produce a ton of pollen (or whatever it is where the scent comes from).
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So true. My neighbor has a chestnut maybe 70 feet from our house and the kids would come in and tell me when the ‘stinky tree’ was blooming. I had no idea it was that tree. And pears are that bad?
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I personally don’t think pear blossoms stinks that badly. I have to stick my nose in to smell it. It’s an unpleasant smell.
My neighbor has a 20 ft Bradford pear tree. When it is covered with blooms, no neighbors ever complain about the smell.
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