Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 5:37PM 
I wanted to come up with an idea that fostered the idea of no-till farming. No-till farming would help conserve natural resources on the farm. Little to no disturbance of the land would minimize erosion of the soil. With more soil, infiltration rates and water storage would improve. Soil and water are necessary ingredients for crop production, so it is important to protect them or even increase upon what we currently have on the farm. More information about soil erosion on the Palouse can be found at http://pnwsteep.wsu.edu/tillagehandbook/chapter1/010185.htm and http://www.tilthproducers.org/tpqpdfs/29.pdf.
The garden weasel was my design inspiration for simultaneously aerating the soil and seeding. The system is controlled by a computer located in the truck. The vegetable being planted is selected and the computer adjusts which seeds are feed into the shaft, the length of the spikes and the hole’s diameter.
I have designed a shaft with spikes attached along the circumference and length. These would puncture the soil, creating a hole for the new seeds to drop into. Seeds need to be planted at various depths so the spikes would retract into the shaft when necessary.
The seeds, which are stored in a container with separate compartments for each seed type, go through a hose or tubing down into the shaft. Then the seeds come out of small gate holes located behind each spike. The seeding component of my design is less time consuming and easier than planting them by hand.
Reader Comments (4)
This only solves one issue with no-till, the difficulty of physically planting the seed. The nest issue what would have to be tackled is the preventing weeds from over powering the crop that is planted. I feel that introducing a over soil layer could solve this issue while still allowing this device to puncture through.
Could different seeds be planted strategically/concurrently? I read that some crops do well when they are planted amongst another crop - the plants form a sort of symbiotic relationship that helps each of them get the nutrients they need.
Also, it would be neat if the device you designed could have some sort of sensor on it that detected soil conditions/nutrient levels. Then it could either plant a seed appropriate to the conditions or it could insert needed nutrients at the same time.
I like how the spikes would retract depending on needs of the seed being planted. It seems like there'd need to be a way to ensure that the seeds would drop into the holes since the seeds would come out of the holes differently depending on how fast the truck was moving.
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