Potato Planter

This is by far my favorite tool of this spring. It is a potato planter. Jim and Robbins formerly planted potato seed with the vegetable planter shown below. It worked they said, but it was awkward. So Jim and his son Lonnie made this tool just for planting potatoes. It works on the same principle of the vegetable planter. One person drives the tractor. Another person sitting in back plants. So let me explain more in detail. Before starting, all the potato seed is cut up into chunks - each with the necessary 'eye' sprout. Once that step is done, the boxes of cut up potatoes are loaded onto the black metal frame seen in the upper left corner. Three boxes can be loaded - each with up to a hundred pounds of potatoes. Next the driver positions the tractor over the raised bed of soil. Then the potato planter is lowered so that it contacts the ground. Once moving a set of discs in front (barely visible in this picture) opens a furrow. Then the person in back simply drops in a piece of potato. It falls down the white pipe into the furrow. Finally, a set of discs in back cover up the furrow. With this tool two people can plant literally a ton of potatoes in a day. The one thing Jim said he would change is to add a bigger set of discs to the back. Pretty much, this potato planter is just awesome.