Market Farming

["Dalew Farms" <dalew AT phonenet.ca>]

We are very happy with our Hatfield transplanter after 2 years of lots of use.  I remember at the time humming and hawing about whether it was worth the money or not (we bought it from Johnny's) but after we started using it I wouldn't want to be without it!  This is what I've learned about using it in our conditions:

 

With 2 people we can plant a couple thousand transplants fairly easily in an afternoon.  When training people to use this, I find that there are some people who are better suited to drop the plants in the tube, and some people are better suited to run the transplanter.  Very few are actually excellent and fast at both jobs.   *As a general rule* females are better plant droppers than males, and males are better at running the transplanter than females. 

 

The way in which the levers work is actually counter intuitive.  For most people this ceases to be a problem after a half hour or little more of use and becomes second nature.

 

We've used it to plant into plastic mulch.  At first I didn't have that much success with this, but we were trying to plant into mulch layed by hand.  Once we purchased a mulch applicator, the Hatfield transplanter seemed to work better - I feel its because our plastic mulch was stretched and tighter, allowing the transplanter to pop down through the plastic quicker.  You also need to adjust your technique slightly versus planting into bare soil, to make sure you quickly go down through the plastic.  We do have to fix the odd plant in the plastic becaue the leaf of plastic might end up underneath the plug, but (as long as I'm concentrating! lol) we fix so few its much quicker than 2 people planting by hand.  It does become problematic if you are planting into plastic mulch that might have been rained on...those pools of water on top of the plastic begin to gum up the bottom of the transplanter, and very quickly it won't slice the plastic nicely and your fixing way too many plugs.  Even a heavy dew is not good, so I'd recommend using it only on nice dry plastic if you don't like cursing!  (I use the grinder to sharpen up the bottom a little bit for planting on plastic, but as soon as you get it wet, this help is no longer usefull because there is dirt stuck on the sides preventing that nice clean slice of the plastic) 

 

For planting into bare soil, the soil does need to be worked nicely.  We have fairly heavy clay soil, and if its too lumpy you need to either plant deeper, or fix some plugs after.  However, if the soil is that lumpy, the transplants don't start well whether planted with the hatfield or by hand, so we make sure to have nicely worked soil to plant into.  If you are trying to finish in the rain, as another person commented, it will gum up quickly and start to cause problems. 

 

For us, it hasn't worked well with bare root transplants, although the only crop we've tried to do this for is strawberries, and they have long tangled roots.  I think you need the weight of the plug to keep the plant dropping down.  We did have some melon and squash transplants that were quite a bit older than we wanted (bigger, straggly tops) because we had to wait for the ground to dry up after some rain, that took a little more patience to get down through the tube because the leaves slowed the decent of the plug, but this is not normal.  And again, the talent of the person dropping the plants in the tube makes a big difference! 

 

For maintenance, I have found, like anything,  you need to look after it.  If you are planting into muddy conditions clean it after so there isn't dried up dirt stuck to the sides next time you start planting.  Also, with lots of use, you will have to periodicially retighten some of  the nuts to make sure something doens't fall off!  Overall though, ours has stood up very well so far to heavy use, and even to having one of the handles being run over once!!!  (nobody owned up to that...at least yet!) 

 

Although most of my comments might seem to be negative, those are the ways we've learned to use the Hatfield to save us lots of time and backache!  We like it so much we are planning on buying at least one more this year so we can use it to transplant the large plug sizes we use for tomatoes and peppers!  I don't know what we'd do without ours now!

 

Sorry for the long email, but I thought those were all relatively important points on the use of the Hatfield!

 

Dave

 

 

 

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Wyatt Jones

To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 1:42 PM

Subject: [Market-farming] Hatfeild transplanters

Noticed that people were talking about the Hatfeild transplanter.  My experience with them was very mixed, mostly because my soil is heavy clay.  It worked pretty good but fell apart after using it extensively for a year.  I also had to go back and cover the seed because the soil wouldn't do that by itself so doing it by hand was actually easier in my case.  Might work ok with sandier soil but if I had to do it over I wouldn't have bought it.  I'll have to check out the stand and plant.  With the Earthway I've not been totally satisfied with it either, its better than doing completely by hand but its far from trouble free, seems it always clogging or jamming.  I've done the soap trick, used oil and every other trick but I'm probably going to invest in a better planter when I get the money. 

 

 

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