I cut the rods with my power mitre saw.
The standard brother laminated tape seems to last. I have not had any failures in the past 3-4 years. Brothers also has an industrial Tape that I have not tried. A little more expensive, but might last even longer....
I suppose you could use a permanent marker to write directly on the stake, but normal permanent markers will fade within a year. Industrial permanent markers (Sharpie Industrial) would solve that problem.
the 4 foot rods from Tractor Supply were $1.09, but they have increased to $1.29. Still a very good price. After cutting, that is ~$0.25 per plant stake. The .5" tape is ~$11 per 26 ft roll on Amazon. If you use 3" for a label, that works out to about $0.11 per label, for a total of $0.36 per marker. this price does not include the Brother label printer. At any rate, 3 for a dollar sounds good to me:)
I have additional photos on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/5...
