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NEXT MAIN MENU PREVIOUS Table Knife Garden Markers For the last few years, we've been trying our hands at backyard gardening, and last year we built a couple of raised bed gardens and a hoophouse. We enjoy working in the dirt, and we get a lot of satisfaction from growing some of the food we eat. We're still pretty novice at gardening, but so far this year, we've planted a lot of herbs, greens, tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables. Growing a lot of different plants in a small space is confusing for us, so we need to mark everything, so we know what's supposed to be growing where. Being artists, we figured we could devise some interesting garden markers. Here's what we came up with: Table Knife Garden Markers a bunch of old table knives a couple of permanent markers (we used oil-based markers, which you should be able to find at any good craft shop) We went to our local thrift store, where we bought 25 table knives for 10¢ each. We ran them through the dishwsher (not probably a necessary step), and rubbed each well with a dishtowel to remove any surface water stains. We then "painted" the name of the crop on the side of the knife with a lighter colored pan (green in our case) and then used the black pen to outline the colors and add a little decoration. We did it this way because the stainless steel is very reflective and will become the color of whatever is facing it. By painting on the name in both ligh and dark colors, it should be readable no matter what's around it. After drying overnight (we almost certainly could have done this sooner if we had wanted to do so), we stuck the knives handle first into their proper places in our alreadly (mostly) planted garden. On note: after we had completed this, we saw a slightly more complicated variation that is worth noting. Some people are buying spoons from thrift stores instead of knives and then using a hammer to pound the bowl into a flat disk. Those looked pretty interesting, too. Happy gardening! © 2015 Vegan Street