Garden Gadgetry
The Earthway "Precision" Garden Seeder
I honestly don't know why the baling twine is on the seeder, but it's on pretty much everything around here, there's even some in my pocket right now for reasons unknown...
One day, over a decade ago my husband came home from the local feed and farm store with large smile on his face and a precisely shaped chunk of aluminum under his arm.
"I got something for ya!" he chirped with man-procuring-gadgetry glee.
"Oh boy," I replied with contrived optimism as I wondered just how much that multi-pronged piece of aluminum had relieved from our checking account.
"It's a seeder for the garden, it has different plates for different seeds and everything!" he gushed as he showed off the new toy.
The Earthway Precision Garden Seeder has been around for quite some time, and I have to admit that I have found it useful on occasion. This nifty little garden utensil not only digs your seed furrow to whatever depth that you select, it also plants the seeds, and a chain on the back of the unit covers the furrow in your wake. There is also this little aluminum arm that can mark out your next row as you plant one. Pretty nifty indeed.
There are a couple caveats however. Your ground must be prepped just so for the seeder to work correctly. By "just so" I mean smooth like the surface of a pond in the eye of a hurricane. Absolute post face shave smooth. If there is a rock or dirt clump of any size your seeder will get hung on it like a pair of tighty whiteys on a clothesline. As you come to an abrupt and unwelcome stop you will also plant a large cluster of whatever seed that you are trying to disperse, as you will reverse and ram that clump or rock into submission out of irritation. Trust me this will occur.
Another issue is the seed plates. Six seed plates (Sweet Corn, Radish-Leeks-Spinach, Carrots,-Lettuce,-Turnips, Beans-Small Peas, Jumbo Peas, Beets-Okra-Swiss Chard.) come with the seeder, and they are awesome! When I say awesome, I mean the seed companies of the world would totally adore it if you used them in every garden planting instance. Unless you love to thin your plants, and I mean, who wouldn't love to thin several hundred row feet of corn, then I humbly offer up a bit of a trick that has helped my seeder become more preciosion-ish over the years: masking or painter's tape. I tape every other hole on the seed plates, and I have found that it really has helped regarding the over-seeding problem.
Don't get me wrong, I utilize the seeder every year in the garden. Sometimes I just use it to furrow and mark rows. Other times I use it as the manufacture intended, it just depends on what my approach is at the moment. I absolutely adore the seeder when it comes to seeding bush beans and beets!
You can totally see where I ran into a rock or dirt clump as I laid down these rows of beets. Curse words are guaranteed!
I am pretty sure that my husband paid around $100 for the seeding apparatus all those years ago, and I see that one be purchased for 114.99 on Amazon. If you are a market gardener or have a large garden and don't want to spend the funds on a three point mounted tractor seeder or seed drill then this is a good option. It is a durable piece of equipment that sees use year after year, takes abuse without looking like it, and looks kinda cool hanging out in the garden when you forget to put it away.
And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's very garden soil dirty iPhone.
I am surprised you had problems with your Earthway. We were the New Zealand importers for 30 plus years, in the early days we would get 3 to 4, 20 foot containers crammed with them, each year.
They ended up with about 15 to 18 different seed plates, including a blank that you could shape to your requirements.
[experimenting planting potatoes was one]
The trick of blanking every second hole was also well known, but the difference between row length when planted by hand compaired to by Earthway was also very large, maybe we have generous fingers,
I have seen in Holland a home made set of 10 to 12 seeders set up in a frame to plant I think onion seed behind a tractor.
There was a fertilizer attachment that hung on the handles and spewed feritilizer on top of the seeds before the chain covered them up as well.
The Weeder/cultivator they had in the early days to combat the Planet Jnr wasn't strong enough and never made much progress down here.
There was also a tractor pulled seeder for a while, again to combat the Planet Jnr, it went the same way as the weeder.
The soil in this region trends toward gravel and clay. Rocks grow better than corn.
We even had a 'rock picker" to help the gardeners, it dug abut 18 inches deep, dug everything up, the dirt fell through a barred web back to where it came from, the rocks, up 30 to 36 inches, carried on to a side conveyor into a truck.
Worked perfectly, just come back ever third or fourth year to get the next crop of stones.
Stones grow better that weeds, and are harder to get rid off.
Ha ha! It's probably just me @len.george! I do get that thing out every year and make use of it, and it is definitely a good piece of equipment to have around. I'm just a bit of a goof sometimes! lol!
The Dutch are so ingenious! I have seen people using the seeders attached together to plant multiple rows at once, wonder how that goes for them when they hit a rock or dirt clump😜.
Maybe my problem is that I have tiny hands and less generous fingers. That is some good to know information right there, and speaking to information, I am so glad you are on Steemit, seriously, I could read what you write all day! Thank you so much for your comment, I always enjoy them and get a kick out of everything that you have seen, done, and experienced 😊. Hope you have an amazing day!!!
thank you for your reply. It is good to know somebody is reading my BS.
The ganged planters are used in rotary hoed, use year after year fields,
altho we have used them on the headland [where a tractor turns around to start the next row] of wheat fields to grow corn very sucsesfully, that was anything but smooth, kiwi inginuity, tape a plastic bag over the top of the seed hopper, nothing falls out, and you can see when it needs more seed.
That is awesome! Baling twine, plastic bags, and tape! A veritable trifecta of to-do ingenuity! I wish you had pictures of some of this seeding that you speak of, kiwi ingenuity in action, especially of someone peering through the plastic bag to see if they were out of seed. I am all for the simplest solution for getting something to work so I can get to work. You have definitely seen things for sure!
New Zealand was my husband's uncle's favorite country, and the man tromped all around the world as a Marine from the late 30's through the late 60's. It sounds beautiful!
And if you mean "Bodacious Scrawling" when referring to your posts, then I totally agree😉
definitely scrawling, poor Trevor has to read and point out my errors before I am allowed to post. Due to long time use there is a lot of abbreviations in the first attempts. Still why have a son if you can't use him.
I was referring to the product of our nearby town. Bulls.
Heh. Yes, I shall tell my son that tomorrow when we proceed to build our outdoor oven project! That is great though that you have Trevor as a proof reader and editor. I do that for my dear father too. Actually he just talks and I write it down, but close enough.
Ah, I figured that bovine fecal matter was your descriptive intent, but I still think that your posts are far from that, and as my Papa had a hundred head of cows I would like to think that I am somewhat well versed in the identification of said substance!