I picked one of these up at our local feed store the other day and I thought I would share the experience with ya’ll.

Assembly

It was pretty easy to put this together, it involved about 4 bolts with nuts,  a pin and a few wing nuts, I had it together in about ten minutes, and that included finding the tools.

Tools And Seed Plates

Here you can see the tools needed to put the seeder together, 1/2 inch and 7/16 inch wrench and a cresent wrench, thats it, very simple !  The seed plates in the picture are different sizes to plant the different seeds, there are 6 altogether , you can also purchase other sized seed plate to handle any possible seed you could want.

Still In The Box

Here is the box, to give you an idea of the size, 4 cubic ft bag of humus for reference!

Assembling The Seeder

The seeder comes partly assembled in the box, all you have to put on is the rear wheel, the handle and the row spacer, in the photo above I have the wheel on and I’m about to add the handle, you can see that in the left side of the photo.

The handle goes on with 4 nuts and bolts , its that easy , the row marker goes on with a pin and cotter key so it can move freely, very simple design.  Like I said it took maybe ten minutes total.

Complete Earthway Seeder

There is also a black plastic clip that the row marker folds up and tucks out of the way in, it just clips on the the handle , it doesn’t hold the marker very well at all, you may have to rig something if you want it to stay there when your done seeding.

Well there you have it , in ten minutes a time and back saving device for the serious gardener, next time a review of the seeder in action, and yes it does have some pros and cons, but i’ll let you know about ‘em soon, so stay tuned!

We got a used rental tractor, Kubota L5740 with 178 hours,Front end loader,  a round bale spear, and a 60 inch tiller for a real good deal, they even delivered it to us, They are a real class act there at allied… and no this isn’t a paid endorsement.

Delivery Day

We didn’t wait long to try it out, we hooked up the tiller and started in on a 40 x40 foot plot that has sort of grown over, lemme tell you , it cut thru the overgrown weeds like butter, what would have take a whole day with a walk behind tiller took about 15 minutes, and that was with my brother-in-law and me taking turns on it and marveling at our achievements, Here take a look!

Tilling the garden plot

Like i said it chopped thru weeds and soil and left a smooth patch of dirt, you could hardly see any vegetable matter left.

60 inch tiller

You can see on the right side what the patch looked like prior to the tilling, and the results on the left side after just one pass, its smooth.

Before the tilling

Here is a better shot, you can still see the rows in the bottom right, that’s from previous cropping, it flattened those out too.

After 2 passes, here it is

As you can see it does a very thorough job smoothing out this plot, i’ll be planting as soon as the last frost date comes up in a few weeks!

Well thanks for checking by again, I’ll keep you updated on the planting soon!

The Parts

Wire baking Rack

We had this one already, They run about $40 at the Sam’s club, the good part about these is that the shelves are adjustable. There is also a larger rack that runs about $90 , if you need more capacity.

Fluorescent Shop Lights

I got these two shop light fixtures at home depot for $9 apiece, The rack has a total of 4 shelves so if you wanted to you could add four more lights for a total of three actual growing shelves, but for know I’m starting with one.

Rigging The Lights

The set up is pretty easy, the lights have some chain included with the, you just have to get the lights centered like you like them and hook the chain to the fixture and then the shelf.  I used two fixtures for the shelf for more light, but you could use just one fixture per shelf need be.  Once the lights are connected you’ll need to adjust the shelves so there is very little clearance from the top of your seed pots and the light base, you’ll need to adjust the light distance as the plants grow, but the closer the better, this keeps the plants from getting too leggy.

Final Configuration

Well here she is, for about 15 minutes of work and around $70 I put this lighted seed starting rack together, it should last a long time since it will be indoors for most of its useful life. I have a few flats of seeds ready to go, so that will be another post, I don’t have the photos ready yet hehehe.

If you needed to you could rig the shelf unit with some sheet plastic for a mini green house set up, I used this set up since it will be in the house where the temps are good but the light isn’t.

Well thats it, I’ll keep you updated on how it works, I potted up some roma tomatoes and some  Jalepeno and sweet banana pepper seeds for the first batch and we’ll see how they work!

Good luck with your gardening!!

Chipper Shredder

I was thinking of this idea last year, I think I may just go ahead with it.  My compost pile takes a while to break down with whole leaves left in there, they form an almost waterproof matt so nothing gets thru.  Smaller particles are better, at least I have heard that.