If you’ve been following us here at Good Dirt Farm, you probably know that we start the majority of our crops indoors using soil blocks. While that is accurate, some crops aren’t suited to soil blocks for one reason or another.
Certain crops need to be sewn very thickly, while others are large-seeded. And then there are some plants that simply don’t like soil blocks, such as carrots. Whatever the reason, some crops get planted the old-fashioned way. Well, not exactly the old-fashioned way.
Whereas many gardeners know the experience of using an old broom handle to create a furrow or simply pressing individual seeds into a garden bed, this is decidedly not the way we direct seed.
Instead, we use a professional tool that’s specifically built to sow thousands of seeds quickly, precisely, and consistently. This tool is known as a Jang precision seeder, and it’s a game-changer for how we direct seed our plants.
What is a Precision Seeder?
The Jang seeder we use is specifically designed to sow seeds directly in the soil. The basic idea of all of these types of tools is the same. First, you place seeds into some kind of hopper. Then, you push or pull the seeder either by hand or with a tractor while a mechanism drops seeds one at a time and covers them with soil.
We would consider the Jang seeder to be the Cadillac of precision seeders. The first amazing feature of this tool is that it can handle almost any seed you can think of. All you have to do is switch out the “roller,” the mechanism that captures one seed at a time. Simply use a roller with holes that match the size of the seed you’re sewing, and you’re nearly guaranteed to drop one seed with each turn of the wheel.
The second great feature of the Jang is the seed spacing adjustment. The seeder has a gearbox that can be modified to change the distance between dropped seeds. For example, sowing carrots around 2″ apart from each other is ideal, while a bigger crop such as peas might be more comfortable at 4″ apart. The Jang makes it easy to switch between even small differences like this.
Finally, the Jang does the job of cutting a furrow, covering the seed, and pressing it gently into the soil in one motion. The “shoe” that makes contact with the soil cuts a little trench for the seed to drop into, and then a plate just behind the seed pushes the furrowed soil back over the seed. Then, the rear wheel gently presses the soil down, increasing seed-soil contact and improving germination.
This tool allows us to plant one 50-foot row of seeds in around 20 seconds. When you start thinking about seeding five to ten 50-foot beds each comprising 3-6 rows of seeds, you quickly see how farming at this scale wouldn’t be possible without a tool like the Jang.
How We Use Our Direct Seeder
Some farmers start most of their crops using a seeder like the Jang, while others may only use such a tool for one or two crops. We fall somewhere in the middle.
Virtually every market gardener will use a seeder for carrots because they don’t transplant very well. We also use our Jang to direct seed beets, spinach, turnips, arugula, peas, and radish.
There are definitely some drawbacks to the Jang seeder.
First off, it isn’t cheap, and you probably aren’t going to get your money’s worth unless you use it frequently and sow a lot of seeds.
Also, the seeder requires fairly uniform, flat, and light soil. This can be rather difficult to achieve in our no-till system, where we often have mulch on the soil or residue from past crops that can get in the way.
Overall though, the seeder is a tool that we could not live without as market gardeners. Next time you crunch on your local farmer’s carrots, there’s a good chance a tool like this one was involved!