Ted: Hi, I’m Ted with Everything Attachments. We’re here today, we’re finishing up on part of our garden here that we’re working on with Peanut in the last couple days. So this is our cole planter. We had…and we wouldn’t sell it on our website because we say we won’t sell Chinese attachments, and that means the complete attachment. All of the attachments may have a small accessory or something bolted on from China or India, and there’s not much I can do about it. I build everything I can in the United States, in our own factory with our own workers, but the planters just got a lot of parts, and it’s not something that I’m set up to do.

So we buy these cole planters, they’re made in Georgia. I tried selling what looks exactly like this from China, but they just didn’t sell, even though they were almost half price. So this is not a cheap piece anymore. We used to sell a lot. Back in the farming days, we sold a lot of Ford 901 planters, single row, double rows. We have a toolbar that this can also be a double row. But right now, we’re just using it on a small tractor for a small garden, so it’s set up as a single row.

We filled up our fertilize hopper and the seed hopper. The plate that came in it was for corn, so we’re going to do the corn first, and it’s already set up for the right spacing for the plants to be. You can adjust them further or closer apart if you like with the gears. The fertilizer, we’ve set where we think we want it. We’ll adjust that a little further. But the cole has been around forever. Judging from the sales of the knockoff and the cheaper price to the American-made cole, the cole outsells it 10 to one. It’s something you can buy and depend on and know you can get parts for. It comes with all the plates to plant about 15 or 20 different seeds, and you can get more and more plates to plant almost anything to go in here.

So we’re going to put Peanut on here. We did these two straight rows here because corn and okra grows to over your head, and when you plant it on the side of a small garden like I have here, no matter what side you put in on, it’s either going to take away all the sun rise and shade the rest of the garden, or it’s going to shade the garden on the sunset. So we chose to take two separate rows for tall plants, corn and okra, that way it won’t be shading our squash and all our other plants. So Peanut, go ahead and jump on here.

So this is like a lot of things. We sell these and we’ve used them and we know how to use them, but as far as setting them up, no one is right. We’ve done what we’ve done to start with without using it at all. It’s brand new. Just like everything else we try to show you, it’s real, we don’t edit anything that we don’t have to out of it that just might be a blooper. We show you in the learning curve of how to use these things just like we do. So we’re going to start at the bottom and come up, and then we’ll see how it will walk along, see how it’s going, and see what adjustments we do or don’t need to make. I got to have the back end down further. Hold on.

Peanut: I ain’t got to hold good yet, now.

Ted: I know, but I can get the wheels off the ground. All right. Well, you’re still off the ground, almost. All right. Fertilizer wheel’s moving. It’s just now getting to the place where it starts falling off. Let me add a little bit more to it. Hang on, Peanut.

Fertilizer’s going down through there good. I’m going to check the seed plate real quick. Seeds rotate…come around and grab this live. Go ahead, go slow, Peanut. You can see it lifting up the seeds, dropping them down the hole. One, there goes another one in, skip that one, there goes another one in, there goes another one in. Yeah, it’s doing good. All right. So we’re getting it. That part is working. Fertilizer is going down right in the hole right behind it.

That little wheel makes a little edge so the fertilizer can go in right behind the seed, but it’s not on top of the seed where it will actually keep the seed from germinating. All right, you’re good. All right, I think you’re good. I see the fertilizer pouring right down the shoot. I’m going to double check the seeds real quick. It should be working. Oh yeah, one, two. They’re going right down the hole just like they’re supposed to. Perfect.

Come on over to this side, Scott, where you can see the fertilizer going down through there. So it really doesn’t matter how fast you go because everything is timed with gears and chains to where you end up with the right amount of fertilizer. Quits when you pick up, the seeds quit. It’s all timed to be right. The fertilizer comes in right beside the seed and is pushed over with the wheel so it’s not on top of the seed to keep it from germinating. We’re going to switch seed plates to the okra and plant these other two rows.

Okay. So we’ve done our corn and this is what we have left. At $9 a little bag for this hybrid corn, which I think I paid way too much for, we’re going to take it back out and save it. So go ahead and let’s change these plates. Did you pull the right plate out for the okra?

Peanut: Yep.

Ted: As you can see, it also comes with more plates and different gear sets where you can change the timing of how often it drops the seeds. But for okra and corn, we want them to be the same distance apart. Then, the okra plate, which is a 434 plate, is what it calls for. That fits right in there, and it’s going to screw that down. You got your shield under there? That holds tight, I think. Oh, that’s right. That’s what keeps it from turning, is these holes. It’s locked in with that peg, yeah. Okra is a really small seed. I sure do love the pan-fried okra that my mother used to make.

We’re going to keep one tire. Since we only made it for two rows, we’re going to keep one tire up on the edge. Pull forward just a little bit so I can let this down right. Okay, that’s about right. That may still bounce. Okay, let’s go right there. You don’t want to press down too hard on the front of this. It floats. The only thing you want to make sure of is that the back wheel is down, so it’s turning, so everything is timed to release the seed and the fertilize. Go ahead, Peanut.

Fertilizer is going down. I’m going to check the seeds real quick. Whoa, Peanut. The wheels and all, everything’s turning, but the plate is not. I think the wheel was turning, or was it…no, it’s not turning. I bet I’ve got this too tight. So we’re going to learn together. I’m going to back this tightening off of this a notch to let that wheel have some room. Then you’ll see right here is where it times in this plate, right there on this hole to keep it from turning. That way it doesn’t get too tight on the plate. So let’s back all the way back up because I don’t think it released any seed. Right there. I think you’re good. Everything’s turning. Nope, let it down a little further. Yes…no, it’s quitting. The wheel’s locking up. Pick it up and let me check it.

Okay. So, after four or five passes here and having problems planting an okra seed because it’s so small compared to other seeds and corn, we figured out what the problem is. We hope some of our aggravation will help you some in the future. What we found was, where this plate turns down here, it has to be really tight so the okra seed doesn’t get underneath. But there was a little puddle of paint in the bottom of this that we dug out to be able to let the plate fully seed in there for these smaller seeds so the seeds can’t get under it. So now that we’ve gotten the paint out of it, we’re going to put the seeds back in it and we should be good to go.

All right, put it down. As long as the wheel stays turning, we’ll be good. Put it down a little more. A little more right there. Perfect. Wheels turning, okra’s planting, fertilizer’s working, we’re good. All it was was a chunk of paint in the bottom of it that wouldn’t let us set our plate tight enough for this okra and was letting the seed get under the plate and jam it up. Now, that’s a whole lot better.

Peanut, come up just a hair, just a hair. Come up just a hair. You’re good. If you go down too far in the front, that front plate will bury in the ground, and that’s not what you want. You want it to be riding on the back wheel and that front plate, which is spring loaded, to just follow the ground. So the next time somebody calls and doesn’t know why their wheel keeps jamming, we’ll know that there’s a hunk of paint in the bottom of the plate seat. Perfect. It never missed a beat after getting that paint out.

Row number two, and we’re planting it just far enough apart that I can get my handheld tiller or my cultivator through both of these rows. Perfect. Come on in now. You can see now that it’s dropping one seed down every hole now that we’ve got it spaced right. Perfect. Bang, bang, bang. That’s exactly what you want, perfectly spaced apart. You’re not wasting seed or getting them so close they’re going to choke each other out.

So we all learned something today. We learned how to help you when you buy one of these on something that could possibly be a problem. I can see how the paint’s going to end up there when they paint these. It took us 30 or 40 minutes of aggravation to figure it out, but we can certainly save you that time by knowing what to do. It was able to go through there with the corn plate at first, even though the paint was in there, because the seeds are a lot bigger and they couldn’t get under the plate to make it jam. But when you do something tight and that plate needs to really fit good, that paint that was in there, it may not be in all of them, this is the only one I’ve had assembled, but if you have that problem with this not wanting to turn, then it’s most likely that there’s paint gummed up in the very bottom of the tray where the seed tray works.