A Homemade Seed Planter

My Seed Planter I was able to cobble together a hand held seeder out of PVC pipe and a few other pieces of hardware. Im expecting that it will work for medium to large si!ed seeds like beans" corn" peas" pumpkins" s#uash" and" most importantly for me" sunflowers. $eres how it went.

Cutting the %ottom &ith a table saw" I shaped one end of a '() inch PVC pipe to a V shaped point. Ill call this the downpipe and its length will depend on how tall you are. I was shooting for it to end up a little abo*e waist le*el" and Im fairly tall" so mine ended up being +' inches long.

,he small piece was part of the big pipe. -ut of a piece of + inch PVC pipe I shaped a strip to close off one side of the V point at the bottom. I used PVC cement to attach it" and Im thinking that it may be the weakest link in the machine. ,ime will tell if it will withstand repeated .abs into the soil. ,o close off the other side of the V and" more importantly" to open and let a seed drop out" I fashioned a flipper out of a piece of steel. /etting a useful piece of steel is probably the hardest part of the pro.ect. 0ou want to be able to bend it" but not so easily that it will come unbent halfway down a new row of corn. It helps if youre a bit of a pack rat and collect odd materials for future use" but hardware stores will probably ha*e something you can use. 1sing a .ig saw is an easy way cut the steel" but a hack saw is fine too.

2lipper Cut -ut %eing 3rilled ,he flipper starts out being cross shaped. ,he side arms are drilled for a pi*ot bolt and then bent down to wrap down o*er the pipe. ,he top arm is then bent up to make a le*er to attach a pull rod. ,his rod will pull the flipper open to drop out the seed.

Some shiny paint has been added and you can see how the flipper fits on the bottom and attaches to the pull rod.

,he business end of the planter

,he ,op 4nd ,he funnel is to guide a dropped a seed into the pipe" and next to it is a cup made out of a ) inch PVC coupling sitting on a )5 male x '()5 female PVC bushing. 6 + o! 0oplait yogurt container fits perfectly into the cup" closing off the hole in its bottom and holding the seeds. ,here is no automatic drop of the seeds. Sorry" Im .ust not that cle*er. 0ou ha*e to hold seeds in your fingers and drop them one at a time into the funnel. 0ou drop a seed" then s#uee!e the handle to open the flipper and release the seed in the soil.

,he handle is made of two parts. ,he lower piece is attached to the top of the pull rod and to a spring" so that s#uee!ing it upward pulls the flipper open and drops a seed. &hen its released" the spring pulls it back down" closing the flipper. ,his piece is made of ' inch PVC so as to be big enough to wrap around the '() inch downpipe. ,he ends of this were angled in the table saw in the same way as the bottom of the downpipe.

Parts 7ayout ,he indi*idual pieces are shown abo*e" and all together below.

3one

8e#uested close ups of the flipper Sorry theyre blurry.