Today, I reached a milestone in an important project.
Making better use of our field across the street has been a perpetual endeavor. Unfortunately, planting a crop has proven easier than harvesting one, due mostly to the difficulty of keeping weeds under control during the growing season.
A major component to the difficulty of weed control has been the difficulty of planting seeds in parallel rows. When plants are growing at irregular spacings, removing weeds from between becomes more difficult. Having identified a large part of the problem, this winter, I used Tinkercad to model components for a 5-row seeder. A contraption capable of planting five rows at a time would allow me to create easily-weeded rows with convenient walking paths between each set of five rows.
There are three major components to the seeder I have designed and, today, I used a 3-D printer to begin producing the prototype. The first component is the seed hopper and the disk that collects seeds to drop into the soil. Today’s main image shows the printed portions of those pieces.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks operates a Maker Space and Print Den for faculty, students, and staff to use for classes or to pursue their interests. It is a wonderful opportunity for those of us with inventions to bring to life.
I am creating my own multi-row seeder primarily because the existing options are simply too expensive for the size of field I am planting. A well-known company sells a pushable five-row seeder for $1700. The quality of their product is undeniable and it has many adjustable features which would allow the user to optimize the planting process. However, there is no sensible economic justification for us to make such a purchase. Presently, we only intend to plant barley and the seed spacing doesn’t have to be perfect. We could buy 100 bags of barley for the cost of that seeder, but our entire field might only produce 2 bags. Clearly, a cheaper solution is necessary while we are farming on a small scale.
My seeder will work on the same principle as many popular brands of seeder – a rotating disk collects seeds from a hopper and drops them on the ground. In contrast, though, my device will be much less complex, and far cheaper. As I build and test the seeder, I’ll post updates in this blog. Stay tuned!
