Simple Row Marker Helps Plant Even Spaced Trees

Simple row marker helps plant even spaced trees MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous 11-3-8 "Once I got the idea, it took months to find the right materials to make it work," says S.W. Douty, Amherst, Virg., who made a unique row marker for planting even-spaced Christmas trees. He says it'll work to plant fruit trees or any other similarly wide-spaced crops. Douty has more than 20,000 trees under cultivation and must replant thousands each year. He plants in rows on 6-ft. centers, spaced 6 ft. in the row for even "checkerboard" spacing that makes it easy to mow. He needed an efficient way to quickly mark out rows for planting. First he tried mounting a spike on a flat disc that was 6 ft. around. He'd plant a tree wherever the spike poked into the ground. That idea failed because the spike constantly plugged up. Then he got the idea of cutting a notch out of a wheel that would cut a slice along the proposed row. The notch leaves an un-cut piece of sod every 6 ft. He found an old cast iron press wheel off an antique "one horse" corn planter. "It's exactly 6 ft. around and mounts on the tractor 3-pt. I hung Deere tractor weights on the side of it so it'll penetrate the sod, and cut a notch in it that's a couple inches across. It slices along the length of the row. We plant a tree at each piece of uncut sod," says Douty. He marks each row initially with flags to set up spacing and follows each previous row with a chain row marker he rigged up. It consists simply of a metal arm, dangling a loose length of chain, that reaches out from the side of the tractor to the previously cut row. He keeps the tractor on row by dragging the chain along the row. To center the row wheel, he hangs a small weight from the wheel near the notch. When he lifts the wheel out of the ground, the notch rolls down to the bottom. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, S.W. Douty, P.O. Box 81, Amherst, Virg. 24521.

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