I think the tags swinging in the breeze just attracted them and they chewed them.
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OK. I am trying decent fencing -and- a deer deterrent spray. Maybe I’ll spray paint the tags as well, just to be safer.
So, I used my dog tag machine for all my labels. I bought 1-1/4" square drive stainless steel screws to stick to the trees. I had some of them initially tied with wire, but I knew that either those branches would end up getting pruned off or the would grow and girdle the limb. I went with putting the screws into the trunk, loose. The tags hang and have plenty of room to let the tree grow. I figured I can always relocate the tag on the tree if it started to crowd.
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Looking into adding tags to keep track of my trees and grafts.
I’m thinking metal tags, a template, and an etching pen.
Has anyone gone this route?
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I use those, but don’t bother with the template. For my in-ground trees I attach the tag to the irrigation line. For trees in pots, I put the tag on the trunk and also label the pot with a Bic Wite-Out pen.
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Thanks. I don’t know if any marker (as opposed to etching) is permanent enough to use. Of course on the scale of my yard I could simply reapply the marker if it fades.
Here’s yet another thread:
Pic is here:
All my trees – in ground or in pots, have metal tags. I etch the tags with an ordinary ball point pen. A metal etching pen will cut those aluminum tags.
I also write the name of plants in all my pots with Bic Wite Out marker pens. The fluid is not an ink. It is permanent.
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Thanks @Richard.
Perfect advice. Save me a few bucks.
I guess the metal tags are so thin the metallic pen would be too much.
Warning:
Deer will chew those Impress-O tags into an illegible crumpled made of aluminum, if they can reach them.
The little stainless steel wires will break, after the tag flops around in the breeze for a year or two.
Ak me how I know.
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I buy tree tags since theyre not much and convenient. The thin steel or copper wire they come with is worthless but I, like others here, use lengths of Romex to attach. I use a Brother label maker and it works a treat. I have tags nearly a decade old that show no sign of fading or peeling. They eventually fail when the tag fatigues and splits at the attachment point for the wore. Its little bother though to deal with during my rounds in the orchard. I like that during grafting time I can quickly whip up 10 of these in as many minutes. I generally hang them on tree gaurds
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I think they’re out of business. I noticed the Amazon sellers no longer picture the boxes.
I can believe they and similar products do poorly in your environment. However, they are doing fine here on several dozen plants in ground plus nearly 800 plants in pots.
These are what I’ve been buying lately:
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Spot on!!!
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Thanks for all the ideas. I won’t waste my time now…
I still use the impresso-type tags for some stuff, but I know from experience that they are not reliable in settings where deer will have access.
There’s no replacement for a good, well-maintained orchard map, but if you get into multi-variety grafted trees, I’m not sure how to do those in a digital format.
For the past 25 years, I’ve been cutting tags from a discarded set of enamel-coated aluminum Venetian blinds… brown on one side, white on the other… I write variety name in pencil on the white side, and scribe the ID info into the paint on the brown side. I’ve attached them by nailing them to the trunk with a small aluminum nail… previously, I was punching a hole and hanging them with 16ga. aluminum electric fence wire, but found, with my level of neglect, that the wire often ‘grew into’ the tree before I realized it, or the tag swinging in the wind eventually wore out the hole and the tag fell off.
It’s not a bad plan to ‘plant’ a permanent tag at the base of the tree, in your preference of cardinal directions (N,S,E,W) so that you can find it if the above-ground ID tag ‘disappears’.
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My yard is small (75’ x 150’) but I have and will be doing a lot of grafting on existing and future trees.
I’ve certainly found enough info in posts here to make it simple for my needs.
Another idea,
The metal cables end up breaking,
Plastic ropes too,
I use these rubber bands in the form of anchors, they are usually used to tie tomatoes,
I have had them in trees more than 10 years and they do not break, nor do they degrade, when the diameter of the branch is larger than its diameter, then they begin to stretch, I think they could be stretching at least another 10 years, I hope that in more years I already know by heart the name of the variety and where it is or maybe I will have made the decision to cut it.
Regards
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Wonderful… Thanks for the idea.
I’ve used different tags.The ones that didn’t last,were an aluminum sandwich,with paper in the middle.All metal are much better.
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I have been gradually talking the tags off my trees. I found they caused more damage on the trees. The tags that you guys are talking about, aluminum writable tags, after few years on the tree, some
blow away, some fell off the tree,some are illegible… the worst, I found couple wires/strings were choking the branch pretty bad. The branches were much smaller when I attached the wires/strings to them and later they grew quite large. I failed to notice and took action of loosen the wires/strings. I concluded that I real don’t need to know the name of the cultivars in my yard.I only need to remember the ones that tasted better
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