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Holland transplanter

grandpa Love

grandpa Love

Well-known Member
We saw this at Tracy Brown's last month and I couldn't wait to get back up there to get it. Yesterday was a great day for a road trip, with Grandma's shoulder issue. Took a slow trip up to north Mississippi. Old planter seems to all work. Can't wait for the next tractor show, bet no one else has one! Been looking around the internet and haven't found one like it. Any of y'all ever seen or used one? Patent was issued in 1940, I believe it used to be horse drawn.
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I may end up with an acre of sweet potatoes!!
 
Spent many days on a one row setting tobacco plants. You didn't get the water tank and valve with it? The horse drawn ones look completely different. Not rare at all around tobacco country but probably much more so in AL/MS. You can still get parts for them :)
 
I can probably drive to two or three around here in fence rows , by no means rare for sure. Of course I am in tobacco country.
 
Kevin It is too new to have ever been horse drawn. The horse drawn ones had an entirely different setup. They did not have the packer wheels driving the chains with pockets. This is a vary common style mechanical transplanter. Also I do not think it is a Holland brand. They had a different style of plant holder. One side was metal with the other being rubber. Mechanical Transplanter brand has the type of pocket yours has. also Mechanical Transplanters of the vintage of yours had green boxes, frames and seats. The packer wheels would have been red. The Holland Transplanters of the age of yours would have had Yellow seats and a red frame. Both companies are located in Holland, MN. IRC family started as one company and split sometime in the 1940s. Both still manufacture transplanters. There are thousands of these planters in the Burley and flue cured tobacco growing areas. A newer style of transplanter that only takes one person per row has largely replaced the style you have in the majority of the tobacco areas. The style you have is still popular in vegetable areas as they work better with tall plants.

Yours just has had the water system taken off of it. The water tower and valve are gone. watering the root ball as they are planted is critical to getting a better percentage of live plants. This is why these planters where designed/patented in the first place.

In this picture you can see Both brands of transplanters. The one closest to the camera is a Mechanical brand. See the green color? Then you can see a Middle age Holland in the back ground of the picture.
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Here is a picture of a New Idea Horse drawn transplanter. This design is what the Holland and Mechanical brands replaced.

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Here is a picture of a hand transplanter like you bought for me.

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Holland Transplanters

Mechanical Trans planters
 
Well you posted this as I was writing my post. LOL A lot of the parts will interchange between the Holland and Mechanical brand transplanters. As for age I would say 1960-1970. The earlier Holland had a plant holder that had one side being steel with the other side gripping the plant with a rubber piece.

I have generations of cousins living in southern Ohio that raised Burley tobacco for years. we traded work back and forth. They would come and help me in summer hay making. We would go back and help them in Aug. tobacco harvest. Their season and ours did not over lap much. In the early 1980s I would watch sales in IA, IL,MN, and WI. There would be transplanters sale in areas that grew vegetables. I would buy Holland and Mechanical transplanters cheap as the market was so limited in the areas. I then would refurbish them and send them to Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky for my cousins to resale. I also made a lot of one rows into two row planters. I remember one winter I found a lot of them. I sent a semi load of them back to be sold. That would have been in the early 1980s. A lot of grain farmers that had quit raising tobacco in the BOOM times of the 1970s where getting back into it trying to survive the grain crash of the 1980s. They sold well.

In Ohio and Kentucky you can now buy these transplanters for $50-100 a row since the tobacco quota system is gone. These would working transplanters in much better shape then the one you posted about. Sorry about saying that.
 
That was made not fr from where I grew up. I use to go by the plant several times in the summer. There was a lot of muck in the area and these planters were used to plant celery plants and if I remember right they also used them for onions. I use to see a lot of them sitting around the muck fields in the weeds after they quit using them. A farm down the road from me bought one that was 3 pt mounted to plane aspargrass with
 
We have 3, 2 which are very similar. All 3 are operational and used yearly. There are many of those in our tobacco country. I am in the process of restoring one and have recently ordered decals from Holland. Parts are readily available. I'm guessing that one is from the 70's and it is tractor driven. It looks like part of the hook up bar is missing where it would hook up to a 3pt. hitch. With that one water barrels would be mounted on the tractor. I'm in Ky.
 
Had a single-row model for use with a Farmall Cub (single point fast hitch) used in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Kinda rusted away when stored in a damp building for many years. I cut it up for scrap except for the wheels and seats and the fast hitch.
 
No problem, if you plant your sweet potatoes when the ground is a little bit damp they should do fine, might have to water them in a day or two. We used insecticide and liquid fertilizer in ours to get the plants started well. As JDseller said probably 60's or early 70's. Yours looks to be in decent shape so you may get some use out of it. Your only concern may be getting enough "volunteers" to ride it since it's a two row ;-)
 
We had them around Middle Tennessee in the early sixties. The one in the picture that sits right down on the ground i remember the first time I ever saw one used. They beat the crap out of using a tobacco peg. They are still used a lot in my area.
 
Old farm buildings in NC are full of them. We grew tobacco from the late 70s through 2004, and I made my spending money as a kid working for tobacco farmers. I still have 3 single row planters. There is no market for them here. Mechanical, Holland, Powell, and Ellis were the most common brands. Did you get the water barrel with it?
 
I bet you could buy em and get small organic veggie farmers to buy em. I didn't get a water tank with mine.
 
Hey huntinggreen, I didn't make piney chaple show last summer. I remember meeting you there the year before. Hopefully we go this year. Great show.
 
Not many here in Northwest Ohio, Northeast Indiand but a lot of vevitables grown in area of 50 to a hundred mile from me. They want the planters that will unroll and plant in plastic now and yours will not do that. The plastic controls weed problem. 2 produce auctions about 60 mile or less from me, one northwest, other east. The one northwest a friend helped get it going and is on board of directors. I have delievered produce to this one for them.
 
In addition to sweet taters, we planted lots of tomatoes with them. It is a shame you could not have gotten some barrel mounts with it. Most likely you would have to mount one on your front bumper. Then you would want power steering. Good luck with it. Best wishes to Grandma.
 
One more thing, if you pull this with a gas tractor with the bottom exhaust that comes out the back, Don't! We used a MF50 gas for a few years and while setting tobacco in a long narrow bottom I got "gassed", too much carbon monoxide, and lost manual dexterity and had to get off. I had a headache for a few hours and couldn't walk, had to crawl away. We put a vertical extension on it to finish the field. The next year we used a diesel with a vertical exhaust without problems. Okay I'll stop beating a dead horse.
 
Now, now we sold a truck load of them every spring years ago to plant tomatoes and they are still used to plant tomatoes here.
 
I have owned and used both Holland And Mechanical transplanters.Use to plant 115 acres a year of tomatoes from 1980 to 1997. By 1997 Hientz,Hunts and Campbell's had stopped contracting tomatoes here in the NW Ohio plants.First used a Holland 3 row.Steel packer wheels would slip driving unit.Next had a Mechanical with a atv tire ahead of unit driving unit with rubber tired packer wheels.Better.Next planter back to a Holland planting twin rows 14 inches apart 3 row. Took 6 units and 12 people riding.Ground drive from planter wheels.Best planter.
These are bare root transplanters.All our tomato plants were grown in Georgia.They would be pulled packed in crates and shipped up here in 2 days.
Faults of bare root plants.Transplanting set back,disease,unable to hold plants very long if rained out.

Last planter was a rotating carousal.Much better system.These planters use plug plants grown in plastic trays locally in greenhouses.Pluses.Short drive to pick up plants,plants take off faster,higher survival rate,less disease,able to hold through a rain out period.
Those bare root planters are only worth the price of scrap here and the carousals not much more.
 
One of my first "real" jobs on the farm at probably eight or nine years old was setting tobacco on one those which were what we called tobacco setters. I started as a kid setting plants left handed as the adults had seniority, so to speak, and sat right handed. Of course they could work equally well on either side of the setter. As a result of that at a young age, even though I am technically right handed, I have always been able to use my left hand interchangeably with my right. Good times for a youngster on the farm as you were considered a viable part of your families livelihood.
 
I know around Berne, In. They don't want them, only the ones that unroll and plant in plastic.
 
About 40 years ago a plastic plant in Terre Haute was developing a plastic that was white on one side and black on the other side. It was developed for planting veggies. I knew a chemist working at the plastic plant. I got a roll of it. Worked nice. Lot of effort to remove at end of year.
 
(quoted from post at 13:56:47 02/10/19) I have owned and used both Holland And Mechanical transplanters.Use to plant 115 acres a year of tomatoes from 1980 to 1997. By 1997 Hientz,Hunts and Campbell's had stopped contracting tomatoes here in the NW Ohio plants.First used a Holland 3 row.Steel packer wheels would slip driving unit.Next had a Mechanical with a atv tire ahead of unit driving unit with rubber tired packer wheels.Better.Next planter back to a Holland planting twin rows 14 inches apart 3 row. Took 6 units and 12 people riding.Ground drive from planter wheels.Best planter.
These are bare root transplanters.All our tomato plants were grown in Georgia.They would be pulled packed in crates and shipped up here in 2 days.
Faults of bare root plants.Transplanting set back,disease,unable to hold plants very long if rained out.

Last planter was a rotating carousal.Much better system.These planters use plug plants grown in plastic trays locally in greenhouses.Pluses.Short drive to pick up plants,plants take off faster,higher survival rate,less disease,able to hold through a rain out period.
Those bare root planters are only worth the price of scrap here and the carousals not much more.
Click to expand...

Did they close the plants? Is that related to NAFTA?
 
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