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Hey there.
Planting seeds by hand has been important for more than ten thousand years since humans became involved in agriculture
and there are a few types of basic hand planters that have been used.
things like the jab-type planters.
Now these jab-type planters work pretty well for large seeds like corn or beans
But they don't work well for small seeds.
Now when I say small seeds I mean seeds like sweet alyssum seeds
I've been doing research on sweet alyssum for several years because it's a
very important plant that we plant in
our vegetable systems in California to
attract in beneficial insects.
Insects like the hover fly.
Hover flies are really important because they help us to control pests like aphids
and hover flies need pollen and nectar from alyssum flowers or other flowers to help
us do that. And so I've done a lot of research on putting alyssum into fields
and how that can help us with some of
our pest control needs.
But the existing planters that we're out there didn't work for sweet alyssum, they're just too crude.
So I developed a planter that I call the slide hammer planter.
It's called the slide hammer planter because
this part here slides and it's kind of like a hammer.
When it hits this washer
it transmits a force down the handle and that force disrupts seed that's...
So we take there's a little vial down here the
seed that we're trying to plant sits in
that vial so when this slide hammer
strikes this that force is transmitted
down here and it disrupts seed in this
vial and the bottom of the vial has got
holes in it okay and those holes have
seed then coming through the holes and
that seed travels all the way down this
tube and out into the soil.
And this is a really, really effective
tool for precise seeding rates of small
seeded plants like sweet alyssum and a
few others that I think are really kind
of interesting and important especially
if we kind of start thinking about them
from a nutritional standpoint.
The one I'm thinking of is purslane. It's one of my favorite vegetables it's also a weed
but there are cultivated varieties of
purslane that you can buy the seed for
and this planter works really well for
planting that seed. You can put in just a
few seeds depending on what size a hole
you've drilled you use drills to drill
holes in the bottom of this of the vials
and you can do a very precise seeding
rate with small seeds using this planter.
The planter can even you the planter can
even work for things like mint
Mint seeds are extremely small.
I think there's about 300 thousand mint seeds
per ounce and to be able to put out just
a few mint seeds with each time this
slide hammer strikes is pretty remarkable.
I'd actually say this is probably the most precise hand planter
that I'm aware of that can be used for
planting small seeds.
Okay so let me kind of explain what we're going to do today.
so I'm going to obviously explain how to make the planter
and we're going to kind of do that in two parts.
The first part will be out in the shop and for that
part what we're going to focus on is
this bottom section here, this is what I
call the shoe and how that connects into the handle of the planter.
And then we will look at how to make this part here
so that this washer stays right here and
works well on the handle doesn't slide
down and then the last part probably the
most complicated part is making the
seeder shoe down here out of a piece of copper.
So after we've done that we'll come back in here
and then we'll finish off a little bit more of this part and then we'll put it all together.
And we'll be done with that part and then
excuse me, then I'll demonstrate it in
the field just to kind of show you how
easy it works and you know how fast you
can walk and things like that so I'll do
a little field demonstration in some
lettuce fields and then we'll come back
in again and I'll give you some tips on
how to select the best drill bit for
making the holes in the bottom of the
vial because that's a really kind of an
important part of this and then we'll
talk a little bit about ways to adjust
the seeding rate if you want to have
more seeds come out each time the slight
hammer drop there's some some tricks and
things that will work pretty well with
that and then lastly I'll talk about
some alternative materials that you
might use if you for some reason can't
find some of the things that I've
described here now the materials that
we're going to use to make this planter
are pretty basic there are things that
for the most part you should be able to
get at a really good hardware store
there's a few things that are little
specialty items like these vials but
most of the components are pretty basic
the tools that you'll need are pretty simple
their basic shop tools can tools.
One really important thing that I should mention is that this video actually accompanies a paper in the journal HortTechnology
and I wrote that paper to
describe this seeder but I thought it
would be helpful if there was actually a
video that showed how to put it together
because sometimes it's a little bit hard
to understand from a written document
how to make something.
I know personally I'm a visual learner and so I thought that having a video might help
you to put one of these together as well
so let me just check to make sure I
haven't forgotten anything here, excuse me
All right so let's go out to the shop
we'll do those parts that we need to
work on and then we'll come back in here
and put it all together and then
continue with explaining some of the
cool features of this slide hammer stick seeder. It's pretty cool.
Okay so let me show you how to connect
the this the seeder foot this angle iron
down here at the bottom and then I will
show you how to make this slightly
crimped area here which holds the EMT
coupler and the hammer stop washer right there
and then lastly I'll show you how to make the the seeder shoe this copper piece at the bottom.
Okay so we'll start with the easiest one the the foot
Let me put that one down there alright so to get
the foot to go inside the tube all you
need to do is basically slightly crimp
this so that this will slide inside there
Let me just switch out my glasses the other ones are a little better.
alright alright so I've got my piece of
tubing right here and I'm going to put
this inside the inside the clamp and I
will put it in the clamp about up to the
same distance as this is long so you
don't have to go more than that put it
like that and then see if I don't crimp
this a little bit it's not going to go
inside there so then I give us a little
bit of a crimp and I keep testing to see
if it'll fit in yet a little bit more
okay so now it slides in there nicely
as you can see that slides in and out of
the the end of the EMT tubing.
Now once you've got that to where it will slide
in and out
so once it'll slide in out then we're
just going to crimp it in there a little
bit better so that it doesn't come out at all.
And we'll do this several different locations.
okay
So it does feel like it's holding in
there now pretty well. I need to crimp it a little bit better.
Okay that's doing pretty good a little
bit more on the end flip it over do the
other end part that looks pretty good.
Now if you wanted to, thought it was
necessary you could take your hammer and
just hammer that down to make sure it's
really in there good alright so now
that's nicely secured to the end okay so
that part's pretty easy very simple.
Alright now we're going to work on this
center section here which is where the
the hammer stop washer is, alright.
So we need to put the EMT coupler down there
and then we are going to put the washer
over that. So what you'll notice when you
get these couplers is that the coupler
from the store is not meant to slide
down on these. These are actually used to
connect two pieces of pipe together and
they don't go all the way down because
they've got a ridge in the middle.
So what you need to do is take your your
coupler stick it inside of a vise like
this, don't over squeeze it.
Just slightly in there and then file out the inside
using a file like this. okay
So I already did that with this one so this coupler
will actually slide down over that
And I've made a mark down here.
there's a mark at one meter.
that's where I want my washer to be so that the hammer stop
washer is right there in that one mark
now and that one meter mark now the
coupler size that I'm suggesting you use
I'm sorry, not the coupler but the washer doesn't
quite fit over the EMT tubing.
the inside diameter of the washer is a little bit
too small so you need to stick that...
sorry about that.. so you need to put this
in your vise and then use your file to
file that down just a little bit and
I've already done it with this one so I
filed this down just a little bit and
you can see this will not fit over the
EMT tubing and we're gonna take it right
down to the 1 meter mark.
okay so I've got it right there at the 1 meter mark
and then to lock this in there what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take my my pipe
my EMT tube.
so hold it, hold it right there at the the 1 meter location
and I'm going to turn it
so that when I finish
I'm going to actually crimp this bottom section here right below this and
I'm going to have it crimped in the same
direction as these set screws
are okay hopefully so hopefully that
makes sense
all right so I got my washer
at 1 meter and you know it doesn't have
to be exactly at 1 meter
ok so it's right there and I'm going to put my tube
right inside that clamp there,
make sure all that lines up right yep there's the
1 meter mark.
here's my EMT coupler, now notice the set screws here I'm orienting
them so that they're the same direction
as the vise is going to squeeze it and
the reason for that is that I think it's
going to... that those set screws will
connect to the pipe better because
that's
because of the way the compression works
okay so I got everything set there.
Now what you want to do is you want to just
squeeze that down until it's crimped
just about a half an inch and I'm going
to use my tape measure to check when the
crimping has gone down to about a half
an inch
okay so just give it a little bit of a squeez
check with my tape measure now I
can go a little bit more you don't want
to over crimp this part because if you
over crimp the EMT tubing you're gonna
make it weaker. So I just want to crimp
it enough so that this coupler and
washer can't slide any further down there
okay
that's that looks pretty good right there all alright now take this guy
out and look at that all of a sudden the
coupler will not move now
okay so again just to clarify I squeezed
it so that it's like this and the set
screws come that way now what you can do
is you can take your your screwdriver
and just tighten those set screws okay
so the set screws are tightened and
that's not going anywhere
now the washer might still be a little
bit loose that's fine it doesn't matter
if that moves it because it's going
to get hammered when the slide hammer
slides down there anyway you know when
this action is happening that's gonna
hold the washer in place alright so
we've got our foot on we've got the
center part crimped and now we're going
to do the last part which is the the
foot I'm sorry not the foot but the the
seeder shoe
all right now what I would suggest you
use is the blue type copper and that
blue type copper is a little bit thicker
than the red one. Remember this is what
we're trying to produce is something
like this so if you look down here at
the end you can see this has got a nice
V or U shape and I've got my mark an
inch and a half up from there now this
one I actually made with the red type
copper which is a little bit thinner
it'll be fine but I think the blue one
should last a little longer okay so I'm
gonna stick my ..
. stick my pipe in there and I'm not I'm not tightening you
too much just a little bit.
A critical thing now is you're going to cut this at
about an inch and a half up you don't
want to cut more than a little bit less
than halfway through okay so I want to
cut just a little bit less than halfway
through the the pipe the reason you
don't want to go too far is because this
end piece won't be as strong if you cut
too far through that so I'm going
probably, I don't know, maybe 75% of the
way through or maybe 80% actually.
Alright so that looks pretty good right
there so it doesn't take very long.
Okay so I've got my little cut there now what
you're going to do is you're going to
orient this so that it's lined up
correctly in your in your vise when I
say correctly I want to make sure that
it's not the cut isn't too much this
direction or too much that direction
alright so let's see here
it looks pretty good just a little bit
and I know you may not be able to see
this clearly through the video but the
cut is just slightly above the the top
of the of the vise alright now what
you're going to do is we're gonna give
it a little squeeze and then just check
it alright that looks pretty nice so
I've already started to squeeze it down
see that
so it's it's coming out pretty nice and
centered I don't want it to have I don't
want that crimp to be or the compression
to be one side this way or one side that
way I want it pretty much in the middle
now you could do this with a hammer if
you wanted to but I think it's actually
far more accurate to do it with a vise
okay now once I've got it to about that
point there what I'm going to do next is
I'm going to put the the end of it in
the vise this way and start crimping and
I'm going about a little bit less than
half way or so okay and I'll bring it
and do the other side as well what you
can see is I'm starting to get a little
bit of a nice v-shape right there you go
nice and slowly actually comes up pretty
good so you check that out looking
pretty nice huh? it's not really hard
it's a lot of fun actually to do this
all right so I'm trying to bring all
those areas where there's a little space
together so that it looks like a solid
piece and I'm not
well yeah that looks good right there
okay now once I've got it to this point
I'm going to take my hammer and pound it
so that I can make it into this V shape
here a little bit so to do that I put it
back in the vise there
just work slowly you don't need to go fast come out
better if you go slowly bit by bit okay
it's getting more like a little v-shape
there notice I'm alternating
it back and forth between both sides so
ideally when you're done it'll look
actually that looks pretty darn good
right there I think I might bring it in
a little bit more but ideally when
you're done you can notice that the
area that you've crimped is pretty much
in line with the rest of the tube okay
sometimes you might want to put it on
here just with a little crack like that
to bring in maybe a little bit more all
right so that's looking pretty good I
like how the shape looks I'd say it
actually might be a little better than
the other one that I made earlier now
one last thing I want to mention is that
the area right in here right in the
center there we want to make sure that
there's not a gap where seed that's
falling.. remember the seed is going to
fall down the tube here and we want to
make sure that seed doesn't somehow go
behind the back of this and get caught
in a little air space in there so what I
like to do is I like to take a punch
like this
and go in here and just make sure that
I've I've pushed I've crimped it really
nicely down there so it's not hard to do
just take a flat ended punch like this
one put it right in there where the V is
and then give it a hit
okay so again I'm just going right into
this section here and just making sure
that the tubing is really crimped
together right there you can actually go
all the way along that edge
now when you look down the tube from the
other end and I realize you can't see
that from where you're at but when I
look down there these two pieces of
tubing that I crimped together are
nicely closed there's not like a big old
air gap in there so that's pretty much
it we've got our tube for the or the the
seeder shoe made so this is going to go
right down here at the bottom okay
so now that we've got this part of it
down the foot and then this hammer stop
washer let's make one more piece and
then we're going to pull all this
together and make our slide hammer
planter so what we need to do is we've
got our shoe that we just made we're
going to take that reducing coupler and
just put it on there by hand all right
and now our seed vial needs a way that
it can stay on the top here of this and
what we're going to do is we'll take a
piece of this is a small piece of
high-density polyethylene from a water
bottle not a water bottle a soda bottle
the dimensions are right here two inches
high by four and an eighth inch this
direction and I cut it out of this water
bottle and it's so the water bottle was
oriented this way and what we're going
to do is we're going to take this and
wrap it around our reducing coupler
get the edge here lined up and then we'll
take a little bit of tape just
cellophane tape and we're going to just
temporarily hold that together okay so
that's just right at the seam okay now
you can see the seed vial slips in there
perfectly now what we do is we remove
this so it stays in the tube and we're
going to take a piece of duct tape
okay so we got a piece of duct tape and
I'm just gonna tear it down the middle
and what this duct taped is is gonna do
is it's going to go it's going to seal
the outer seam here as well as the inner
seam so we'll place it through the
through the tube and get it lined up so
that it will obviously go over the inner
seam and the outer seam and then we just
first connect it on the inside
okay so there's it's nicely connected
there and then what I'm going to do is I
don't want to have a big old seam here
so I I'm gonna rip this off a little bit
to shorten it a little bit right there
okay so that piece goes right up to the
top there and then this piece here look
at that it's pretty good it goes right
to the bottom so this way we've really
made this extension too much stronger
it's not going to come apart now and
that can fit really nicely onto the
extension onto the reducing coupler now
the easiest way to get it on there is to
actually bring it through like that okay
so there we go we've got the we've got
our extension tube on the reducing
coupler and our seed vial sits in there
real nicely okay so that's the last
thing we needed to fabricate and then we
take one of the make sure this must be
an extra here we take one of our this is
the number 12 clamps and we grab our
socket wrench just tighten that in okay
you could actually connect it on there
with tape if you wanted to but I prefer
to have it on with a hose clamp all
right so that's it right there the seeder
shoe assembly is all ready to go
what we need to do is connect this to
this part here in the easiest way I
found to do this is to take the largest
so the largest hose clamp goes on first
just slide that all the way up there
take the next two number twelve ones I'm
sorry you have the number 12 so this
first one is number 16 then these two
are number 12 slide those on there and
make sure these are open enough
okay and
then we're going to take our tube here
I'm sorry that you have the shoe and
just slide it in like that okay so you
need to bring my shoe down a little bit
more the depth that the seed will go
depends on how far this is down the
further this is down the the bottom of
the shoe the deeper the hole that will
be made in the soil and that will then
push that or make allow the seed to go
down there I'm just going to remove this
for a minute right now I get this lined
up and what you'll hopefully can see is
I'm going to type that tighten this one
first this one is the one that goes
actually around the bottom part of the
reducing coupler and I'm tightening it
it's on the side here it's not going
this way it's like that okay I'm gonna
just get that one a little bit tighter
and then
this guy here you've got that one there
actually I'm gonna switch this one over
hold on just a minute you could have
these the I'm just gonna have all these
ends face the same direction it'll just
make it a little bit easier to adjust
all right
so that one's there well now tighten
this guy up but half way up there and
then the last one here you can see how
the socket wrench really comes in handy
if you have to do this with a
screwdriver it's not nearly as good okay
so when I'm doing this I want to make
sure that my my tube is lined up the
copper tube is lined up with the EMT
tube and the V is facing just like that
so see that there so it's nice and
symmetrical okay so we've got
so I got that all done there look at
that looking beautiful huh?
Alright so there we go that's the seeder tube
assembly on there now next part here is
we need to have a way that we're going
to be able to secure this in there
because when the hammer stop or when the
slight hammer hits this we don't want
this thing jumping out and so for that
we're going to take another one of our
little clamps and this is the number 8
size clamp okay I'm going to open this
one all the way up and I'm going to put
it around this part of the tube here
close it back a little bit okay now if
you're wondering what the flag is for
I've already already cut this flag in
half but it were a little bit less than
half this was a long flag and I'm just using
a piece of wire out of this so I took
this flag and I'm just using the wire
and I formed that wire into a J shape
like this this J shape the length of the
wire before I cut it was six inches long
alright and notice there's a little hook
on the top and then there's a little
hook this piece down here and what I'm
going to do is just take this thread it
through like that you can see it just
hangs on there like that and I lower it
down to my to my seed vial and tighten
it up
so this J shaped wire basically just
pushes against the top of the cap for
the seed vile and keeps that vial in
there so this isn't going anywhere now
when you want to change your tube
your vial all you got to do is push that to
pull that to the side it's springy right
so pull it to the side it springs back
and it holds in there so that's our seed
vial right. Okay so that's that bit let
me tighten that just a little bit more
now we've just got one more part to do
all right now let's move up to the slide hammer
pretty basic, pretty simple but
very effective we'll take our threaded
nipple this is an 8 inch long piece of
PVC. Make sure you don't strip this when
you put that on there. okay got it there
put the other T on the other end. Now in
the paper I described an experiment that
I did with the weights of these the
slide hammers. And the weight that I found
works well and it's not overly heavy is
basically this right here. So two of
these three-quarter inch T's connected
to the riser and then a 3/4 inch elbow.
Now you could you could probably leave
this off and it'll be fine but because
this is basically the weight of the
original one that I found worked really well
I just kind of stick with this and
it's somewhere in the range of like 600 or so grams this whole piece all right
now our that slides freely over that and
look at that
hey we're just about done
man this doesn't take long at all
okay so let's put this on the handle
You see that there it's working just like it should and now we got one little last
thing to do here so I've got two more clamps
okay one of these clamps this one here the smaller one that one goes right
here with the slide hammer and it just
slides with it
if I didn't have this clamp on here and I just put my spring on here
the spring can go inside the inside this
slide hammer and that's not what you
want because you want this light hammer
to engage the spring so we put this
clamp in there and that way the clamp
the spring cannot go inside there and
then we are going to connect the top of
the spring to the handle and we'll be done
it's a pretty simple design took a
fair bit of time to figure it out
but I'm actually really happy with it I like
how it is all relatively simple and it
works really really well. okay so look at
that okay so there's our slide there's
our slide hammer seeder now I'm going to
say something about the top of this
that's really important that is the
spring section the spring that I've
chosen is one that does not completely
compress when you lift up the seeder okay
so it took a little time to figure out
what type of spring would work well for
this but the spring specifications that
are described in the description of the
video and in the paper, this spring works
really well okay so when it when the
seeder is lifted up the spring engages
and that keeps the slide hammer from
jarring the end here and dropping seed when
you're moving the seeder from spot to spot
You don't want the seeder to drop
seed until the slide hammer strikes the
washer okay so there you have it the
slide hammer seeder and it works really
well for a lot of really small species
of seeds as well as some even larger
ones although I haven't tried anything
bigger than say chive seed. so one thing
you might be wondering is how does this
seeder work to provide such precise
seeding rates? What's the mechanism?
it seems so simple well here's here's the
way it works. So when the seeds in this
vial here and there's holes in the
bottom of the vial... what keeps the seed
from flowing out of that vial when it's
not disrupted is this basically an arch
or a bridge of seed that's formed just
above the hole of the vial. Now if this
if the hole in the vial is too big of
course the seeds just going to pour out
the bottom but if the hole in the vial
is just large enough to allow seed to
flow through it, but also small enough to
form.. have allow the seed to form a
bridge above the top of the hole,
than the seed won't do anything until
the slide hammer disrupts that bridge and
then a few seeds just above the hole
fall through the bottom of the fall
through the hole. Now one thing I should
mention in most cases this concept of
bridging or arching of materials above a
hole in a agricultural tool like a piece
of equipment.. it's a problem.
For example if you're planting if you're fertilizing
a field with fertilizers whether or not
there are organic fertilizers like
pelleted chicken manure or synthetic
nitrogen fertilizers that's been that
have been pelleted what you don't want
to have happen is for there to be a
bridge that forms right above
the hole that dispenses the material.
You want that material to keep moving
through, there but ironically with this
seeder we actually want the bridge to form.
We want the bridge to form until we
strike the handle with we strike the
slide hammer down and then it disrupts
that bridge and allows a small amount of
seed to flow through there. So in a
nutshell that's how the seeder works is
that we've got these bridges or arches
that form right above the hole and the
seed won't flow... won't flow out of there
until that is disrupted by the hammering device
So I wanted to just give you a
quick demonstration of how easily the
seeder works. And this is a field of
romaine lettuce where normally we would
plant the alyssum into it much earlier
when the plants are just emerging or
soon after thinning in that way we can
see exactly where the lettuce plants are
and put the alyssum at whatever density
you want to in between those plants.
The advantage of that is that the alyssum
has lots of time to form flowers.
It takes about 30 days or so for it to
start flowering.
And those flowers will be in the lettuce crop for a long enough
time while the lettuce is growing to be able
to attract in beneficial insects like
hoverflies into the field and help us to
control aphids on our lettuce.
But for demonstration purposes this field will
work because I just wanted to show you
you know how fast we would normally walk
and kind of how easy it is so what I've
got here is I've got my vial and this is
the vial that's specific for sweet
alyssum I've got the appropriate hole
size in the bottom and I've got about
half our 3/4 of a vial of the raw seed
I'll put it in the top of the extension
tube there on the seeder and I always
like to check and make sure that I've
got alyssum seed coming out the bottom
and also that my seeder shoe depth is set correctly.
Okay so I'm not going to go
very deep on this field
but this should work for getting this... just as a demonstration purpose.
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So I'm just going along here at a pretty relaxed speed
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One thing I should mention that's kind
of important is where should you put the hole?
So my suggestion is to put the
holes in a part of the vial bottom
where it's easy to drill but also where the
bottom is relatively flat so I would
suggest on these outer sections of the
vial where there's no irregularities in
the shape of the bottom.
Just put your holes there.
Obviously the more holes you
put the more seed that's going to flow
through there if the hole is
appropriately sized for the vial.
If you go to a really good hardware store
a really good one
you'll find a lot of different size drill bits in addition to
sort of this set here. So these standard sets going
down to 1/16 inch are pretty easy to find
but if it's a really good hardware store they'll probably have a lot of
other drill sizes in either millimeters
or wire gauge size.
And if you really want a super, super small drill bit set
you could use a jeweler's drill.
So this is a jeweler's drill set
these are extremely small and you have to use
these as a special drill.
This is the drill that you can use with that it just
it's got a spring in there and it
rotates back and forth as you push this
down and it works really well for making
really small holes in the bottoms of the vial.
So I thought I would just mention that in case you're wondering where
where to get drill bits.
One other thing that may be helpful is
when I was trying to figure out which size drill bit to
use or to try out with different seed types
I created a whole bunch of little
pieces of tape here with a label on
there with some seeds in there.
This one here is the alyssum one so there's the
sweet alyssum seed in there the brown
seed and next to it I actually put grain amaranth.
So grain amaranth is kind of a
nice standard.
I use it kind of as a standard for relatively small sized
seeds something to compare other small seeds with
so if I know what size drill bit works well for grain amaranth
and I see that alyssum is a little bit bigger than I well I need to
use a bigger drill bit than what I used
for grain amaranth.
So that's just an easy way to keep track of the seed and I
always have a sample that you can you
know compare with just by eye or under a
microscope with your drill bit sizes.
If you read in the paper, I talk about how
to select the best size or an
appropriate size holet
you generally want that hole to be slightly larger than the
length of the seed. That way the seed can
fit through the hole and not get clogged in there.
I'm gonna say a little bit about seeding
rate so when you're trying to figure out
the best seeding rate. So the first
thing with figuring out the seed hole
size is to figure out I'll seed a hole
that will allow the seed to flow through the vial that's the important thing.
The next thing is if you want to increase
your seeding rate, well you just put more holes of the same appropriate hole size.
So in the paper I show you some several figures where I put one hole
versus two holes and it does increase
the seeding rate when you have more holes
it makes sense, so that's one way
to increase seeding rate.
Now another thing you could do is you can take grain amaranth seed like this
and you can use it to dilute seed to reduce the seeding rate of something.
so this may not work with all seeds but it worked quite well with purslane.
So I was able to take purslane
seed this is selected varieties of purslane the seeds somewhat expensive
and you can mix that purslane seed with
some killed grain amaranth seed and that
allows you to further adjust your
seeding rate rather than just having
pure purslane seed in the vial.
Okay so you can adjust the seeding rate
by adjusting the number of holes and by
adjusting the amount of the target seed
or the live seed that you want that's
going to come out based on how much
you've mixed with another seed type.
So the easy way to kill this grain amaranth seed
is just stick it in a bowl and put
it in the microwave until it gets really hot
Okay so that should kill the grain amaranth seed in that way
it's just acting as a carrier for the other seeds
as those other seeds are planted.
The nice thing about using grain amaranth
too is that it's easy to see
so when you're trying to figure out you know
do you have the right seeding depth
here with your with your shoe.
Well grain amaranth is great because you can see it really easily in dark-colored soil.
So you might just have a vial of just grain amaranth seed which you use just for
calibrating the
how much to move this seeder shoe down
relative to the the seeder foot.
Okay trying to think if I've forgotten
anything let me just quickly check my...
I do have a few more things I'd like to share with you.
So one of them is alternatives.
So when I was putting together the paper I found that this vial works really well.
Okay so this vial works great inside this with this reducing coupler end of the seeder tube
But they sell these vials in cases of about a 144 of them
so maybe you don't want to pay $50 dollars for 144 of these little vials.
So what you could use as an alternative are medicine vials, pill vials
they're pretty similar in size. The pill vial is a little bit bigger
than this seven dram, this is a seven dram vial
so the pill vials are a little bit bigger but what I did was I took an extension
I made an extension tube specifically for the pill vial.
So my piece of my piece of plastic that goes around here was not it's not this size
it's a little bit larger than that
so I made an extension tube that fits nicely with a pill vial and then I just added
some duct tape around the reducing coupler until the extension tube for
that for this pill vial fit onto it
So that fits like that and then we again
put our clamp on there.
Now one thing I do want to note about this... let me get this off first
this pill vial you want to make sure because that pill vials is a
little bit larger than this the top end
of the reducing coupler you want to make
sure that your holes are definitely
drilled in an area
where the seed can fall through the
bottom of this you don't want to have
the seed too close to the edge of the or
the hole too close to the to the edge of the vial
Okay so that was one kind of
neat alternative seed vial method.
I don't know about you but it seems like I
can often find old seed vials or old pill vials and those would be a nice thing to recycle
Yeah a few other alternatives.
So the Seeder shoe that I
showed here that we made this was out of
that thicker tubing but you can also
make it out of the thinner copper tubing.
It probably won't just last as long
because it may wear down a little bit faster in the soil
but I just wanted to mention that and then I also made one out of this PEX
so this PEX is this is a type of tubing
that they're using in a lot of houses
nowadays this PEX is the same size as
copper tubing and so you could also just..
this one I just cut with a knife
so that this seeder shoe is not made with copper
it's just that PEX tubing and it fits
perfectly with the reducing coupler for the...just like the other one.
Okay and I wanted to mention early on so when I first first started making the seeders
I didn't actually use copper for the seeder shoe at al
I actually used EMT tubing.
EMT tubing works as well.
it's a little bit harder to work with but you can see
I made a little seeder shoe here.
One thing that's different though is this
EMT tubing does not have there's no
coupler that will attach with it.
It's not meant for that and so you might
be able to figure something where you
just tape this on there
I guess that would be an option
but I actually found that having the copper
on here allows... it it's a little bit
easier to connect a smaller tube.
This copper is slightly smaller than the
EMT it's a little bit easier to connect
a copper tube to the EMT than to use an
EMT seeder tube connected with
the actual EMT handle
so that's just something to keep in mind I ...
you could use this if you want I guess if you want
to figure it out
but I didn't I prefer the copper.
Now there are of course some
other alternatives that you may come up with
for example if for some reason you
have a really hard time finding the
spring that works
another thing that I thought could work would be to take
a piece of rubber tubing...
I don't know if you've seen some of my other videos but
I kind of like using bicycle tubing for things
and you could actually connect that rubber tubing...
a piece of rubber tubing...just a thin strip of it
right onto here with a hose clamp
and then clamp it also on to the bottom
of this slide hammer device
and that would allow you that would act as a cushion.
So when this was lifted that
piece of rubber tubing will stretch and
then it would stop and that would be an
alternative to using the spring up here at the top
So just something to keep in
mind as an alternative especially if you
have a really hard time finding the spring.
The first spring I found in a hardware store and it worked great
when I went back again I couldn't find the
same size spring and so I had to come to
contact a company that had.. that make
springs and say can you match the spring
that I initially was finding useful
and that's the one that I have listed in the video description.
Anyway so probably the
most important thing is have fun as you're making it.
and I hope that you will
find this beautiful little planter useful
for planting sweet alyssum or
whatever kind of small seeds that you want to plant
Now like any good design
there are early prototypes that work
maybe but maybe don't work quite as well
I want to just to show you this is the
first slide hammer design that I came up with
it was much more crude than the
the one that I've that I suggest that you make.
I used a lot more hose clamps
I didn't I actually figure out that you could stick this angle piece
the foot inside there until later
but I just wanted to show you this because I thought it might be interesting to you.
I didn't use a reducing coupler for the
holding the seed
the seed vial
I actually used a piece of PVC tubing
that sat inside of, or not PVC tubing but a
drip tape tubing which sat inside this funnel
and then the seed vial went inside there
and then the wire actually was just kind of bent around there
and it held held it in place.
in this case the seed came out of the tube
down into the bottom of this funnel
and then that flowed down through this
other piece of flexible vinyl tubing and out the bottom here.
So that part was very different than the
I think more elegantly designed simpler system that
I've showed you with the copper.
another thing that is very different here is
that the slide hammer stop washer in the
initial planter I drilled a hole through this this and just put a bolt through there
and then had some clamps above that with
a washer on there but I don't know if
you can see this over time this bolt
takes a lot of beating and so that bolt eventually breaks.
So this worked... very well but it's not quite as durable.
Early on I also was making the the nipple, I was just using a galvanized metal nipple here
or a riser but I actually think that the plastic is better
because plastic rubbing against metal doesn't wear
whereas metal rubbing against metal will well wear down
so I just wanted to show you that as an alternative
because I think it's interesting to see how designs are improved and modified over time
So that's the initial, original, seed.. slide hammer seeder
all right let's see anything else to mention
if you've got any modifications or improvements
go ahead and send them to me who knows maybe I'll even put a link to some of those improvements
in the video description here so that we can
continually improve this design or share
ideas on how it worked or didn't work
Alright that's about it for now
take care.
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