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Home-Built Potato Planter
We think our home-built potato planter works better than any planter you can buy. We built it because we couldn't get the accuracy we wanted in commercially-built planters. We also saved a lot of money by making our own machine. We only raise about 50 acres of potatoes so we can't justify spending a lot on equipment. B
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Home-Built Potato Planter CROPS Miscellaneous 18-2-35 We think our home-built potato planter works better than any planter you can buy. We built it because we couldn't get the accuracy we wanted in commercially-built planters. We also saved a lot of money by making our own machine. We only raise about 50 acres of potatoes so we can't justify spending a lot on equipment. But we bag nearly all of our yield ourselves and sell direct to a local grocery chain so quality must outstanding.
Key to success of the planter is the system of seed cups which attach to a length of roller chain that rises up through a seed hopper, with each evenly-spaced seed cup picking up a seed potato as it passes through. The cups ride up an incline and then enter an enclosed elevator housing that fits tightly around the seed cups. As the seed cup starts down the back side of the elevator, the seed rolls out of the cup and onto the bottom of the cup ahead of it, which is now upside down. It then rides on the bottom of the cup to the bottom of the elevator, where it's dumped in the seed furrow as the cup makes the turn and heads back up into the seed hopper (see drawing).
The seed is controlled right down into the furrow, unlike other planters which drop the seed into the furrow giving it a chance to bounce around. By eliminating most skips, we've been able to greatly reduce weed problems because the solid crop canopy shades them out. A 250-lb. fertilizer hopper mounts between the two 300-lb. seed hop-pers. Granular fertilizer is laid down on either side of the 34-in. spaced rows. The quick-tach, 3-pt. mounted planter is ground driven by the left rear wheel on the planter. We can change spacing in the row by changing a drive sprocket. Each row unit floats independently and there are a pair of covering discs behind each row unit to cover the furrow. A rider sits on a seat at center to make sure each seed cup picks up a seed to reduce skips.
We also "almost totally rebuilt" a potato harvester that works better than anything else I've seen. (Olaf E. Grlmsbo, 1812 Harristown Rd., Grand Rapids, Minn. 55744 ph 218 326-2993)
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