Earthway Planter

Does anyone have any good or bad experience with the Earthway garden seeder? I intend to use it to plant green beans, yellow wax and Italian flat green beans for this years farm mkt. I plant 3- 200 ft. rows each week for 5 weeks. Will this thing also plant red beets and lettuce ? Thanks for any input. Ed

I have a earthway hand push seeder, it does not work well in my rocky clay, but my friend lives on sandy ground and it works great there. I have to spend more time raking the rocks out of it's path so it will work, then it works. I think mine has a seed plate for lettuce. I just use mine for corn, I put lettuce and beans in wide rows.

where you at if close i sell you mine with bunch seed plates. i have cut back alot,just no longer really need that bad. they are okay is all I say about them

Have used one for years. Works great in rock free soil and you can get seed plates for about any vegetable.

I get along good with mine. Only complaint I have is when the hopper gets low, I have a real hard time getting the holes in the seed plates to fill. I'm only using it for maybe 50' of any one type of seed and at that low of level, it's almost more trouble than it's worth.
AaronSEIA

I have one and my only complaint is the handle seems to be mounted at a wrong height or angle. Instead of pushing from "behind" you're pushing from "above" giving it an awkard feel to me. A heavy rear wheel would help. Much better on large plots than nothing.

I have one. It does a good job with beans and corn, but I don't like it for small seeds. It tends to plant them too thick. I've planted buckwheat in my food plot with a beet plate and it still comes in quite thick.

Larry

I mark my garden with a drag (springtooth harrow) behind a farm tractor. (You"d be suprised how straight I can drive if I try.) Then just pick the appropriate groove for my rows. Seed a lot of sweetcorn with that planter. Used to use a funnel with a hose, hand dropping the seed. Earthway works far better, faster. Easier on my back! Does tend to skip a few hills now and then, as the corse, rough seed sometimes hangs up. (I usually replant in a couple weeks, to extend production season, so not a big problem.) Beans and other seeds feed very smoothly. Spacing could be increased with a little duct tape over a few holes in the seed plate. Oh, I usually have to cover the planted rows with a gently applied hoe. But far easier than hand planting - not perfect, but pretty good, is my evaluation.

Yeah, I've noticed it feeling awkward sometimes pushing it. Now that you mention it, it is like pushing from above.

As to the original question, we have used one of these for years in a market garden. I've looked at buying much more expensive veggie seeders, but since I can't test drive any of them, I'm content to stick with this one.

As to problems. When using it to plant round seeds like peas or soybeans, the round seeds tend to get rolled under the plastic seed plate, pushing it away from the hopper wall, causing very irregular sowing. I love using it for all kinds of beans, it works very well for them. It does a passable job with beets. With lettuce it plants well, but kind of thick, depending on your seed plate and how fast your trying to get done (lol). You might have to thin some. It does not do regular carrot seeds at all well. It plants them WAY to thick. We have gone to using pelleted carrot seeds. Sometimes I have problems with the round seed pellets causing the problem listed above.

All in all, it is worth the money you spend on it.

Christopher

It's the best deal for the price. To get a better seeder you have to pay a lot more. It's best on larger seed but I use it for smaller brassicas like kale and turnips. Get the set of optional plates for it. For some seeds I use painters tape to cover holes to get proper spacing. You just have to do a test run on bare soil or concrete to see how they drop. For beans and corn it works great.

I have one and they do work good for the most part, keep the hopper fairly full and it will plant better, use mine for sweetcorn, popcorn, beans and peas, try putting an ad on craigslist

I have one with aa sears label on it,but I think it is an earthway,got it for 5 dollars at a yard sale,I dont have a plate for beans,but I did corn with it and it worked good,it worked real good with a row of radishes ,spaced them out good,mine does not have the fertilizer applicater like I have seen on some others

I have the Earthway and think it is very limited to what it can plant accurately. It is also hard to push in our gravelly soil. I bought this old David Bradley for $20, thinking about trying it out if I can mount it to something. It has steel seed plates that I think would work better, and different settings for seeding rate.

I have one I use but not to actually plant the seed as I lay off the row and just use to planter to drop the seed and works pretty good.For in row planting I use a Brinly planter and a JD 71 unit with a hitch on it to use on a Cat 0 garden tractor 3pt.

Lettuce, I plant in seed trays, seed is too small, for most seeders. Beets are plantable, with the earth-way seeder, but it puts some out too thick. It will work fine, on round seed, such as beans and peas, and jams on some long pointy corn. My favorite seeder, for small to medium seed, is an old one, that earth way made, it is a little blue wheel, on a stick, that you fill a red plastic center container, and dial it to the proper listed seed, on the wheel. As it rolls along, it drops the seed in a trench you dug earlier. You can tweak your population, by closing up the holes, a little.

The Earthway is the best planter for the price. Keep it clean by cleaning the hopper and plates with dish soap like Dawn. To help resolve the problem of smaller seeds getting under the plate, you can install a PVC cap to stiffen the plate. GOOGLE "Earthway PVC" and you will find how to do it.
Last year I mounted 3 Earthways to a tool bar on my Cub for green beans. It worked great.
K-Mo

Got mine probably 15 years ago new at a tractor show flee market. Got the planter with marker (only good for 20" rows) fertilizer (never tried using) and the extra plates all for $20 something. Haven't used for several years as I could not get a garden out. Would like to again if I could find someone to repair my garden tractor enginesthat would do it right and that I could afford. Few year ago I had several at local shop to get running and was there for 2 years when I brought them home unfinnished. Cannot do the work by hand anymore. The planter I never tried for the small seeds but for corn, beans and peas it worked good, the only thing I did not like was it spaced the seed way to far apart but as I was using twine to mark every row I would just go down one side of the twine and double back on the other side. My ground is very hard crusty and without putting in the extra seed I would not have gotten enough up for a crop, good sandy loam should not have to over plant on population as I have to. Small stones like to bounce it around and did have to also go over the row to make sure the seed was covered, that little chain just did not do the job but way better than planting it all with a hoe. The seeds not feeding in when getting low just stop and tip the planter side to side and it will fill up next to the plate for a while and repeat but it is easy to watch and see if it is missing on planting a seed.

I've used mine for 10 years now with now big issues. As mentioned, it works better if the hopper is fairly full. I often have to tip mine tot he right to make sure the seed gets picked up. It does plant carrot and such a little thick, but that's a lot better than hand seeding carrots!

I thinks it's a great value. I often see them go used at auction for $10-15.00. I've seen 4 of them hitched behind a garden tractor in a large garden too.