Garden Stakes

I recently helped second graders plant vegetable gardens. The veggie beds definitely needed garden stakes so we could easily see what was in each row. This was especially true for the seeds that hadn't peeked through the soil yet.

There were a lot of options out there in the Blogosphere and in my own noggin. The thing I quickly noticed was that the cute little garden stakes I made weren't big enough. I made a trip to Home Depot and picked up a package of long shims and set to work.

I wanted to keep the whole project as inexpensive as I could (and still make them cute, of course). I used materials that I had on hand.

Here are the materials you'll need:

• Shims
• Paint
• Paintbrushes
• Stencils, alphabet stickers, rubber stamps and ink or other ways to label your stakes (a Sharpie will do!)
• Sealer (optional)
• Duct Tape (to reinforce the super skinny end of the shims)

Here's what you do:

1. Paint the stakes

2. Let them dry (this was a bit tedious since I had so many stakes to paint. I painted them in batches and let them dry by perching them on their sides on top of an open box)

3. Embellish! Write, draw, stamp. Just get the name of your veggie or flower onto that stake.

4. You might want to spray or brush on a clear sealer. I did because I wanted these things to last. I didn't want the elements to quickly undo all my hard work.

5. Wrap duct tape at the bottom. This reinforces the shims which will come in handy when you're staking them into the soil. Also, it will take longer for the shims to rot from being in moist soil. And, if you used a sealer, it will keep nasty sealer chemicals out of your soil.

6. Stick those stakes in the ground!