Planting Tools

Planting equipment is available for all manner of plants and planting needs, tools for planting trees, grass, potatoes, and any other crop imaginable. As an essential part of farm basics, planting equipment must be planned for, procured, trained on, and used in the day-to-day operations.

Tree planting tools will be a major part of any forestry plan. Planting tools are the bedrock of maintaining the future health and regeneration of the successful managed forest.

Tree planting equipment and supplies will also be necessary components of a Christmas tree farm. Planting equipment for a tree farm can include planting hoes, a planting machine, dibbles (or dibbers), planting bars, post-hole diggers, spades, and of course shovels. Probably the least familiar of these terms is the dibble or dibber. A dibber is simply a pointed hand operated tool for making holes in the ground so that seeds or bulbs can be planted. They are one of the most ancient planting tools.

Longleaf tree planting tools can vary based on which kind of planting approach you take. Will the trees be containerized or bareroot planted? Planting shovels work best for bareroot seedlings, since their roots are very large, it is important to create a planting hole large enough to accommodate the root system. There are tools designed for the plug size of many container-ized seedlings. By using the correct tree planting equipment, there will be less root deformation, better survival, and better long-term growth.

In addition to trees, there is also a need for specialized potato planting equipment. These can include potato planting machines and potato diggers. For the home gardener, a spade may suffice for digging the trench to place the potatos in and then mounding dirt over the trench. You could consider direct ordering potato planting equipment from specialty retailers.

When planting Bermuda grass, planting equipment should be used that is designed to handle fluffy perennial grass seed. One planting tool for grass are spriggers. The word "spriggers" actually refers to two machines. The sprigger harvester that digs the grasses, and separates soil from the grass on a wire conveyor, and then transfers the grass parts by conveyor to a hopper or trailer and the sprigger planter that tills strips, spreads the roots, and crimps them into the soil. These machines are frequently used to plant Bermuda grass. Spriggers are used to sprig improved varieties of Bermuda grass in pastures, athletic fields, golf fairway, waterways, highway rights-of-way, reclamation areas, and commercial landscapes through much of the southern part of the U.S.