The Weatherproof Plant Marker: A Covered Card Left Open at the Bottom

"Partially enveloping the head is a frame consisting of a top bar 3 and depending side bars 4, each of these bars having a front flange 5 overlapping the three sides of the head 2, and thus providing a bearing for the card 6, which carries the desired information concerning the plant or group of plants to be marked". "It will be observed that while the top and sides of the card 6 are protected by the overlapping flange 5 such flange is absent from the bottom of the card. Hence there is nothing to prevent the free escape of water at the latter point, and there is therefore no likelihood of rain-water gaining access to the card to injure the same or impair the record which it bears."

**Stake.** Cut 35 cm of 25 × 3 mm mild steel flat bar and file one end to a point. Clamp it in the vice 7 cm from the other end and bend that end back to the angle the notebook gives for where you will stand, checking it with the protractor. **Head.** Cut a plate 106 × 70 mm from aluminium sheet with the tin snips. Fold its top and both side edges forward and back over a folded scrap of the same sheet in the vice, so each makes a channel 8 mm deep; leave the bottom edge unfolded. Rivet the back of the head to the bent end of the stake. **Card.** Cut a card and a clear plastic cover to slide into the channels from below, and write the plant, variety and sowing date on the card. Slide them in. Drill a 2.5 mm hole through one side channel just below the card, push a split pin through and spread its legs: it holds the card in, and comes out when the card is changed. **Test.** Make a second marker the same way and tape its head's bottom edge shut. Stand both in a pot and give each 30 sprays from 30 cm. After an hour take the pins out and compare the cards. Read both at 0.6, 1 and 2 m, and compare with a plain plant label.

**Frank Bateman** of Grenloch, New Jersey, assignor to the Bateman Manufacturing Company of Grenloch, filed US 833,663 on 6 April 1906; it is dated 16 October 1906. His frame was a separate piece: a lug at the back of its top bar gripped behind the head, inturned lugs at the bottom of its side bars held the head's lower edge, and a retaining key, "a simple plug of wood or metal" or preferably a split pin, stopped it swinging off; he also showed a pivoted latch instead. **Honest limits.** Here head and frame are one folded aluminium plate riveted to the stake, and the split pin holds the card rather than the frame; clear plastic stands in for celluloid. The notebook treats the card as small beside the reading distance; its eye and card heights are examples. A spray bottle is not rain. Your cards and your readings are the result.