Bob Push the labels down flush with the soil. The only time you want see the label is when you want to id or determine donor or source location etc. or when you want to plant something on top of or through the bulb. If the label is consistently placed at a certain direction from the bulb relative to your point of viewing, say 12:00 and placed adjacent to a rock etc, that is the logical place to look with your finger. if no label than it is an open space (unlikely), then dig with your hands. sometime you can plant on top of a bulb to get multi season use from the ideal spot, i do this in rock crevices in a rockery. my problem is some labels are too long and cannot be pushed down all the way due to rocks or potting baskete, etc, yes i cut them down insert them sideways, etc. and the frost heaves them up and out and the wind and crows move them about. since i have sliced almost every bulb type, i now initially dig with my fingers. the annual determination of what is what due to missing labels makes the flower enjoyment even more fun ; ) Rimmer in windy SE Michigan Zone 5 with a week above freezing and no more snow cover. > On Mar 16, 2015,,Bob Nold wrote: > > Squirrels have higher accuracy. > > Much less accurate than my trowel, however. I can slice through a bulb no matter how well it’s labeled. (I call it “subterranean twin-scaling”.) > Another idea, and this one is at least hemi-serious, since I grow all my bulbs in the ground, would be some kind of computerized garden-mapping program so I could eliminate labels and yet be able to locate the bulbs accurately. > I have a three-month-old border collie who thinks removing all the labels from the garden makes it look better. > Bob Nold > Denver, Colorado, USA _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/