Epic Kit 1: Six-Row Seeder

She’s a tricksy tool, the six-row seeder. Attention must be paid. But the rewards are significant, and a glow of pleasure accompanies every bed of tiny, perfectly spaced plants poking their heads from the rich earth.

Let me introduce you. Moving from top to bottom in the photo above, you have an expanded metal roller that tamps the soil. This roller is adjusted up or down with the black knobs on each end, depending on how deeply the seed is to be sown. Then there are a row of six hoppers where the seed goes. Under the hoppers an axle with exactly spaced holes, which can be shifted to and fro to accommodate a variety of seed sizes. I’ve pulled the axle out in the photo below, and you can see two sets of holes. There are four of each size hole, so each time the axle does a full turn, four seeds are dropped.

As the back roller is pushed forward, the rubber belt turns the axle (below). As you can see there are three belt settings which determine how far apart the seeds are dropped. I am using the middle setting, which places the seeds at 5 cm spacings (the inner setting spaces seeds at 2.5 cm; the outer 10 cm).

The seed in the hoppers falls into the holes in the turning axle, and are dropped behind the points that make furrows. Here is a confusing photo showing the underside of the seeder. You can see the axle, and the folded metal points that make the furrows. The axle drops the seeds behind the folds of the points, and the rear roller closes over the furrow.

So the seeder tamps the soil, delivers six rows of seed at a given depth/row spacing/in-row spacing, and closes the furrows afterwards, all in one pass. In my beds, which are 800mm wide, the 400mm seeder can sow  two passes, meaning 12 rows per bed, increasing my yields over hand-sown seed by several hundred percent for some crops.

Today I’m sowing rocket and spinach. For the rocket, I use the smallest hole in the axle, and fill all six hoppers. You can also see the perspex cover that prevents light seed from blowing away, or dirt from getting into the hoppers.

Fiddling with all the knobs is not the only tricksy part of using the six-row seeder. Bed preparation is paramount. Because the seeder moves down the bed like a rake, the soil must be loose and friable with no clods or crop residues, and this fine tilth must be at least as deep as the seed is sown (so the tips of the points don't snag on caked earth). Bed preparation is the most time-consuming part of using this tool, and dry-ish weather is essential to gaining the requisite tilth, especially in my heavy clay.

Once the seeder is set up and the bed is prepared, the handle is fitted to the seeder, and the whole shebang is pushed down the bed. The handle is offset so you can push as you walk beside the bed. In the photo below I have completed one pass. You can see the six furrows behind the seeder, as well as the fine tilth of the bed.

After all the fluffing about it takes all of 50 seconds to sow 144 lineal metres of rocket at 5 cm spacing. Not bad!
 
I tip the excess seed back into the bag via the handy flange, and move on to the spinach

I undo the axle and move it along to the second-biggest hole, then, because spinach takes up more space per plant, I fill only bays 1, 3 and 5 with seed, which means six rows per bed in two passes. I also use the black knobs to adjust the front roller up, so that the seed is sown deeper (around 14mm, compared to 10-ish for the rocket).

Once the beds are sown, I water the seeds in. If the crop has a long germination (lettuce or spinach in winter, carrot), I will flame-weed a week after sowing, which kills any weeds that have germinated in the interim.

Below, in a planting of ‘Hakurei’ Japanese turnips, you can see the exceptional bed coverage that can be achieved with the six-row seeder. This panorama is five metres long, the width of a bed (800mm), and shows 12 rows of turnips.

And here is Golden Valley this morning, as the frost is lifting...