The Newfarm Forums

[CP Knerr]

I apologize if this has been covered earlier in previous threads.

This post is mainly aimed at Steve but anyone else can chime in

I'll be designing and fabricating some custom mounts for 3 planet Jr. and 3 Earthway seeders for use this year on my veggie operation (and perhaps using the Earthways for field corn.)

These will be belly mounted on an AC 'G' cultivating tractor.

I'm looking for what these mounts need to have.

Some ideas right now:

1.) All 3 seeders should travel up and down independently, not hard mounted to the frame.
2.) Each seeder needs pressure applied to the back tire if I go over a bump.
3.) It should be convenient to dump the seeds out of the seeder at the end of the row, especially the Earthways.

For requirement #1, I was thinking of constructing a parallelogram out of steel bar stock so I can maintain the seeder's relationship to the ground. When the seeder is up, the parallelogram would have a small area viewed from the side, when down, it would be more rectangular. Is this termed a "parallel linkage"? The front part of the parallelogram would be welded or mounted more or less perpendicular to the ground off of the toolbar. The back part of the parallelogram would be bolted to the seeder's front axle and be the same length as the front piece. Two pieces would be connected with movable pivots by 2 pieces of bar stock the same length.

For requirement #2, I was thinking of constructing a bar mechanism which would go from the parallel linkage, over the seeder, then hook into the back axle of the seeder to apply down pressure. If picked up the seeder would be angled with the back wheel down. The back wheel would hit the ground first as it was lowered, then once the front wheel was all the way down, a spring on the rod at the back would maintain downforce. So, the rod at the back would be cut in half and the halves spring loaded.

I have not thought of a quick release mechanism for #3.

By the way Earthways are now $69 at Northern Tool: http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_1031_1031

I have 2 planet Jr's right now and am looking for a 3rd which I'm hoping to get off of Ebay. So no one bid on what I'm bidding on I also have a spare for parts.

The planet Jr's will be used for seeds like carrots, beets, and other "continuous"-type spaced crops while I intend on using the Earthway gangs for stuff you plant with a plate (sweet corn, beans, peas, etc.).

Do you think I need to mount a coulter to slice the soil for the planting shoes, and/or a no-till-like row cleaner out in front of these seeders? Most of the time I have an OK bed but I do have rocks and would not want to stop the tractor to remove them.

[singingpig]

CP,

Why reinvent the wheel, or rather the mount? Planet Jrs were made with a mount that does everything you describe and attach to the flat "G" tool bar.

I've asked you this before--didn't your Planet Jrs come with mounts to attach to a toolbar. They came either setup for a diamond toolbar or the flat "G" toolbar. Do you only have the hoppers?

Why would you want to mix Earthways and Planet Jrs?

Why wouldn't you want to plant corn with the Planet Jrs?

It doesn't make any sense, what you have described.

It would be really helpful if you posted photos of what you have with the Planet Jrs--they should have a toolbar mount, a cast metal shoe to open the furrow, a chain to cover the seed, front and rear wheels.

I'd post some photos of a "G" mount Planet Jrs, but you never look at the photos...

A photo of what you have would really help.

I have an extra Planet Jr "G" style I would sell you for $125+shipping that you could use to copy.

You can still buy them new. I don't know why you would want to bother with the Earthway's. It don't think they would hold up very well being pushed by a tractor--I'm guessing that the plastic wheels would break on a rock.

Instead of trying to save a few dollars trying to build something for the Earthways, why not just buy more Planet Jrs. They'll do more and do it better than the Earthways. You already have enough projects, why not spend a few dollars to get something designed and built for the job and that is field ready? It's the price of admission--if you want to get in the game you have to be willing to pay the price.

Spending time cobbling stuff together is a false economy--you lose much, much more in production and sales wasting time reinventing the wheel than the cost of just buying something off the shelf that already works. IMO, this is at the heart of your inability to generate enough sales to get the farm discount on your property taxes.

I am not afraid to spend my money on things that produce cashflow. I make my money by producing and selling crops. In the last 6 months I have paid off over $30k of debt for things I bought that would generate cashflow. Buying something off the shelf that is ready to go allows me to keep my focus on where the money comes from--farming.
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"Fine produce for fine restaurants since 1989"

[CP Knerr]

Thanks Steve for your input.

I have not looked closely at how the planet Jr's work. I thought they were good for small seeds planted closely together. I did not know they could plant corn and beans. I will feed some sweetcorn through them to see how they work.

I have 3 right now, without any mounts at all. I have one for parts which has part of a mount on it it looks like. I was in the process of disassembling them all for cleaning and painting as they are rusted a bit.

The farmer I got them from had 4 of them mounted on a flat bar and I was trying to buy the gang but he didn't want to sell the gang but had these extras laying around.

They have a front and rear wheel, a shoe to spread the soil, then a thing with forward pointing wings that looks like it takes soil and covers the seed, then the press wheel. I don't remember if there is a chain back there after the covering device but I plan to get more into them during the nights when I'm not doing stonework on the masonry heater.

Unfortunately in order to get a discount on my property taxes in the situation I'm in, I would need to be making well in excess of $100,000 on veggie sales. You have to make > $10,000 in sales + 2/3 of your income must be from farming, if I'm not mistaken. I'm stumped there until I can just do farming. One of these years (soon) I will need to take the plunge.

I will hold off on further questions/buying one in from the west coast until I have my ducks in a row with what I have

You are correct on spending money to increase cash flow, of course. Right now I'm paying off mortgages at over what I need to pay to get the property paid off 15 years faster, but maybe I should save that money instead and buy more equipment to streamline operations. Then I can pay off the mortgages even faster.

[AndyF]

CP,

I've tried Planet Jrs. for corn and they didn't do a good job. The problems I had were: the seeder doesn't singulate so you can't space the seed out, it just streams out forcing you to go back later and thin out a lot of corn. The other problem I had was that the seeder bound up on any trash in the row and stopped dropping seed. I've had great luck with the Planet Jrs for beans and other plants which can be crowded in a row, but don't like them for plants which must be spaced more than a few inches apart.

[CP Knerr]

Thanks Andy for the information.

Thinning is something I'm trying to get away with, and corn seed is expensive.

I'll keep my lookout for a used 2 row corn planter.

Since I'll be cultivating 2 rows with the 'G', I can gang together just 2 Earthways spaced at 30" with some wood and threaded stock as Gene Logsdon does it. I will look silly pushing that across the field but I look silly most days out there anyway.

I agree with Steve as those things may break on a rock if there is too much downpressure.

I'm not putting in much corn, just maybe an acre or two of field corn and a half acre of sweet corn. I've planted an acre of field corn with my single Earthway before anyway.

Everything else I can think right now that needs to be spaced I transplant anyway. So I should be set.

[singingpig]

CP,

Before you just said you needed to exceed $10k in sales for the farm status.

The Planet Jrs have several plates with increasingly larger holes. If you have the plate with the appropriate hole for corn, prop the Planet Jr up, loaqd the hopper with seed, Measure the circumference of the front wheel (the drive wheel), turn the front wheel exactly 2 full revolutions and count how many seeds drop. Divide the number of seeds by 2Xcircumference and you will have a close idea of how many seeds/foot that particular setting will plant. You can vary the plate settings and see if you can plant fewer seeds/foot without gagging the hopper or damaging the seeds.

Never had a problem with the Planet Jrs getting bound up on trash and not dropping seeds. When I used the Planet Jr, I planted a good 30 acres with an 8 row gang of them. No problem.

Don't just use the recommendations for the hole setting on the cahrt under the lid--you will waaaayyyyy overseed. You need to go through the procedure I out lined above to find the right setting for what you are aeeding. I never used them for corn, but here are some examples of what I did do:

Onions: the recommended setting was around 7(?)--it's been 5 years so the exact numbers might be off. The old boys who owned them used to seed onions at 5lbs/ acre on that setting. I experimented and got it down to hole 3(?) and only seeded 1lb/acre--got a great stand of onions at about 2-3 inch spacing with no thinning required.

Swiss chard: big rough seeds, about 25K/lb. The recommended hole was 21(?) I got it down to 17(?) and ended with a nice stand at 4-6inch spacing.

The Earthway does beans easily, although too thick. Things like peas don't work for crap--the rough seeds compact like crushed rock, stop the plate until the rubber band that drives the plate builds up too much pressure and then the seeds explode out of the hopper, only to gag again a few feet later.

Really your best bet would be to find an old corn/bean seeder and just pull it behind your Ford. I see 2 and 4 row seeders in working condition with both plates in your general area for a few hundred dollars.

RE: paying off the mortgage early. I totally understand that desire. Here's the dealio--that extra money you are paying on the mortgage is only returning whatever your interest rate on the mortgage is. The question is would a corn/bean seeder or any other piece of equipment yield a better return on your money? I would think yes.

The time you save by just buying a seeder made for professional growers of corn and beans, hitching it to the Ford and streamlining your planting of several acres vs fiddlefarting around trying to make do with a home gardener's Earthway trying to plant several acres, and then not knowing what you're stand would look like. A real corn/bean seeder is going to set the seed more precisely and consistently. The hopper size will be large enough you can probably seed the whole acreage without having to refill. If you find one with fertilizer hoppers you can add some pelleted organic fertilizer at seeding time as a starter and really get the crop off to a good start. All this for maybe 2-300 dollars more than what you would have in the Earthway setup.

BTW, I walk my talk. I believe that proper seeding is so important that I spent $13,000 on a 4 row vacuum seeder--I only spent $15,000 on my 62HP 4X4 low hours tractor with 2500lb loader. I can seed a 4 row bed 900 feet long, seed spaced so it requires no thinning in maybe 5 minutes. That saves me labor in every step down the way, from cultivating to harvest. Compound interest.

Especially with your tight schedule. You have a limited number of hours for farming. Every hour you spend trying to cobble together something to work is one hour less you spend in the field. Do you make money in the field or in the workshop? Does the time spent in the shop generate sales or does the time spent on your tractor in the field generate sales?

Farming is a business and you have to look at these decisions with an eye on the business. It may be personally satisfying for you to cobble something together one the farm, just like you did when you were a kid, but it isn't generating any sales for you. It is personally satisfying for me to hand weed beds, but it doesn't generate the amount of sales that cultivating by tractor generates. In the end, Having a thriving business with enough cash flow that I don't have to struggle everyday is farm more satisfying than hand weeding.
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"Fine produce for fine restaurants since 1989"

[CP Knerr]

[CP Knerr]

Sorry about the misunderstood $10k thing too... I will be right around that in sales this year, got more excited, and read the paperwork more closely...

[AndyF]

CP,

To clarify my comment on the Planet Jr. getting bound up on trash, the year I planted corn with it I planted into an area that had been in sod the year before. The ground was tilled, but still had a fair amount of root mass and half decomposed sod in the top few inches and as I pushed the seeder down the row the shoe at the front of the seeder (the piece which makes the furrow) would pick up bits of roots and sod until it had a big clod on it which would hit the front wheel. I'd stop, clean everything up and restart, but had an short area where everything had been clogged up and the seed hadn't dropped uniformly.

I saw your comment in an earlier post about looking for another Planet Jr. If you are interested, I have one hand push Planet Jr. for sale and also a 3-row Iron Age (made by Planet Jr.) seeder for sale. The 3 row is off an old Bolens walk behind garden tractor, so it isn't set up for a 3pt. hitch, but it's mount could probably be adapted to a belly mount for an AC-G pretty easily.

If you're interested in the seeder, check my website for phone # and call me. www.FellenzFamilyFarm.com.

[Krystle]

Oh no--you posted your e-mail address! Prepare for a huge wave of spam and junk in your inbox! Seriously, these forums get crawled by spambots like crazy. I'd recommend editing your post and writing out your e-mail address (e.g. farmer at thiswebsite period com) or you'll get swarmed for years to come. It's sad that we have to be so guarded about posting e-mail addresses...
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Research notes/journal: http://selfmadefarmer.wordpress.com/

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change things, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." – R. Buckminster Fuller

[singingpig]

[singingpig]

[singingpig]

CP, here's the one I saw posted this week:



Guys I had not originally planned on selling this, but I have changed my mind as I found one that would better serve my purpose. I have an Allis Chalmers 4 row snap coupler mounted planter for WD/WD45. I believe it is what they call a drill planter. Comes with corn and soybean plates. Has been barn kept until the last month. Very well taken care off. Has two fertilizer hoppers as well that are in great shape. Did not come with the other two though. I will post pictures later.
Asking $600. i am located in Oblong, Illinois.
Thanks

Don't ask me where Oblong, Il is, Sounds made up to me!

It was posted 2days ago. I deleted his phone number.

They also have combines listed for under $1000 on a regular basis.
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"Fine produce for fine restaurants since 1989"

[singingpig]

I just did a really fast search on www.tractorhouse.com for planters in NY, OH, NJ, PA and got 4 pages of results. Of those there were about 8 2-6 row planter most with fertilizer boxes for under $1000.

There was a place in Halifax , PA (NO idea where that is, map showed it a little north of Harrisburg, again no idea where that is). They had several 2 row planters for sale including a Ford, but it said "call for pricing'

Seriously, CP, it isn't that hard to find a corn/bean drill out there for under $1000.

Here's a brand new one at Northern Tool for $799:

http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200350227_200350227
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"Fine produce for fine restaurants since 1989"

[singingpig]

http://www.marketfarm.com/assets/images/autogen/a_PlanetJrSM.jpg

here is a link to an image of 3 row Planet Jr, 3 point mount in use. Look at it and see if it looks like your units.

Here is a link to the Planet Jr. website with a detailed image of the entire unit

http://www.coleplanter.com/components.htm

For gosh sakes, CP, they have a Planet Jr manual you can download at coleplanter.com. I just downloaded it, they have photos and part numbers for several types of tool bar mounts.
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"Fine produce for fine restaurants since 1989"