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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] seeders
  • Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:54:17 -0400


On Mar 28, 2009, at 9:43 PM, Thomas Patrick Hurtgen wrote:

Rivka,  What parts of the Earthway are you cleaning and with what?  I have an older Earthway that actually has a grove worn in the aluminum where the plate rotates.  Overall I have good performance from my seeder but when planting peas, it will sound and act like a popcorn popper -- spitting pea seeds out of the box instead of dropping them gently down the seeding tube.  Any help that readers can offer would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.
 Tom, Hurtgen Meadows Farm, zone 7, Hillsborough, NC

As I remember it, I just took apart everything that looked reasonably easy to take apart, washed it all off, including the seed plates (using, I think, a little dish soap and a dish cloth), let it dry, oiled what looked like it could probably use oiling (I don't remember whether I used 30 weight or WD40, but think it was probably the WD40), and put it all back together. I only figured out last year that I needed to do this. The problem you describe with the peas had been getting worse and worse; also with soybeans; and was massively better after the cleaning. I expect I'll do it every year. This year I'll try letting the seed plates and hopper dry without rinsing all the soap off, as another poster suggested; though it occurs to me that I might need to rinse and resoap, to make sure the dirt does get rinsed off.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale



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