Labels, Potting, and Frost

So we arrived at the Nursery just after 12:30 pm today.  We had 2 main objectives:
#1 Pots plants (Surprised?  Me either)
#2 Label plants - Print labels!

Jared and Mom attacked the potting, and I was responsible for the plant sticks.

The plant sticks were a challenge for a couple of reasons.

• We have not tried out the printer yet
• We have not tried printing on the pot sticks
• We are not sure how the Garden Program we are using works
• We do not have all of the information needed for the pot sticks

Just encase you were not sure, this is an example of a pot stick (also known as a plant stick)

Mom has an excel spread sheet that listed the plants that she bought (common name, botanical name, cost, from where, etc.)  The problem was that there was not botanical names for all of the plants.  I spent a good part of the day Googling botanical names and entering them into the Garden Software.  We are currently using a trial for the Plant Tag and Track Software.  After all of that work, I was very dissapointed with the look of the layout from the program.  It makes complete sense to use the program if you have all of the information entered into the software.  This would include The common name, the botanical name, the speed of growth, where to plant, common size, width, spacing, and countless other information.  We would love to have all of this printed on the sticks so that when we sell the plants the customers can have it.  Unfortunately, we do not have the time, energy, or information to complete this daunting task.  Not today at least, definitely at some point this makes COMPLETE sense.

So eventually I ended up using a word template for the pot sticks and copy and pasting the different common and botanical names for over 600 sticks.  I ran a couple test runs through the printer and it looked great.  Nice large lettering.  We decided that it was important to have the plants labeled so that we can have our Nursery Inspection.  At a later time when we have all of the information entered into the program we can print new ones that will go home with the customers with care instructions.

I successfully printed over 400 pot sticks today.  Next task will be printing wrap labels for the trees and shrubs that do not get pot sticks.  Below is what the wrap tags looks like: