Tagging and tracking.

 As a data geek and lover of google maps, the possibility of tracking all of the tree planting in a database and showing each numbered tree on a map, was too much of a temptation to ignore. 

I had tried to encourage The Heart of England Forest to do this on a larger scale when I worked for them. Not individual trees, but a record of what they planted and where - so it could be visible on their website with a maintenance history and extra planting information. They did for a while and then after I left, it fell into disrepair. 

For me though, tracking the planting was a must. As I have written in previous blogs, the pleasure of having kids plant trees and know for certain, which individual trees they planted and where, is too huge to pass up. I like to imagine that some of the children at least, will return in years to come and see how their efforts have been rewarded and witness the start of something, something  that will continue long beyond their own lifetimes.  That can't happen without a little careful record keeping. 

I guess there are many ways to solve this problem. 

My solution was one of these :

A Dymo label printer - but an industrial strength one that prints on metal. A charity I am involved with put the idea into my head. They said that you could print on old coke cans with a Dymo printer. This turned out to be only partially true - you could, in theory, with the right kind of Dymo printer, but it wouldn't have very good results. 

The right kind of printer it seems is a Rhino. And they are tricky to buy. Amazon sell them for £300! Ouch! I managed to find one on Ebay in the USA for considerably less (though still a significant sum) and had it imported to the UK - so I had to wait patiently. 

They do seem pretty robust bits of kit though, and they weigh a ton (I understand now why it cost a lot to ship - I think it is made of cast iron). They come with aluminium or stainless steel tape. I experimented and worked out that I could print 3 numbers on quite a small tag with room for a punched hole - the Dymo has a hole punch function which is handy as the metal is surprisingly tough to work with after printing. 

Annoyingly , the font of the printer makes it hard to identify if some numbers are upside down or not (is it 99 or 66) , so I have had to use a nail to mark a dot under the numbers to denote the top/bottom of the tag. That added extra time to the tag making. Given I am looking at 400-500 tags this year, any extra  processing is painful. A better font next time please Dymo! 

Once the tags were made - how best to attach them to the trees? I picked up a load of eBay keyrings. They are £5 for a  hundred, so £0.05p a pop. They will likely rust, but that doesn't matter, as long as the tree tag is legible. 

How to attach the keyring to the tree though? My trial involved some rubber wrist bands - like the charity wrist bands you get for a £1 donation. They were easy to work with and nice and bright, and biodegradable. They worked out at £0.22p each though, which is over £100 just in wristbands in a single. I could definitely spend £100 on better things for the field. 

My good friend Caroline suggested something I should have thought of myself (being a tight yorkshire man, a keen re-cycler and a cyclist) - repurposing old bike inner tubes. This was a stroke of genius. My bike shop of choice (Sowerby Brothers in Mirfield - the best bike shop I have ever used - you should go, they are great) agreed to save me some old mountain bike inner tubes. I popped in last weekend and picked them up (thanks Dave). 

They are perfect  for the job, they cut up easily with scissors, have plenty of stretch for getting them over the tree and will stretch with time as the tree grows.

So far, I have used about 85 tags in the field. I have another 170 made at home. That means I have a few more nights in front of the TV yet this winter making enough for the whole planting season. 

In the long term, these tags will need to be shifted, the rubber tube will perish and start to degrade, but the metal tags should survive. As the tree starts to mature, I hope we can switch to a more permanent tagging mechanism that works well for bigger trees without harming them. Thats another years problem though and once we have a woodland, it will be a good problem to have. 

In another blog post, I hope to document how I married the tags to a database and to google maps. Another winter task.