Soon the green-house will be running and we'll have our first plants germinating. Our supplies have nearly all arrived, including our three-row planter!
I'm excited to see how this works in the field. The front wheels provide drive to a chain on the side which is turning a shaft, running through all the planter sections. There is a little knife and a cover plow for each row. Apparently it's possible to hack/fit five rows on this unit if one purchases some spare parts to modify it. Out of a couple different varieties of micro planter available, this one is known to be least finicky about soil bed preparation.
The seed hoppers contain a wheel which is changed out for each different seed size/shape to be planted. There is a small brush and guide plate which are consumables. You can see the drive sprocket to the side of the wheel. The drive-ratio at the wheel chain can be changed to modify the seed spacing along the row. We will be using this planter for radishes and carrots initially. It can also be used for beans, peas, sunflowers and corn.
Here's one of our seed shipments. Corrine has been organizing these into folders by week. Each folder contains everything needed for that week, and instructions on what to do next. We're trying to apply lots of energy to "pre-work" and planning to that, during the high-labor part of the season, all we have to do is run to the plan.
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