2001 - Volume #25, Issue #5, Page #20
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One-Pass Planter Works Behind ATV
It was designed by Blaine Burley, Woods-N-Water, Inc., a hunting and fishing consulting group which advises land owners and conducts guided hunting trips all over North America.
Burley has a background in engineering and natural resource management and spent several years managing properties for the U.S. Air Force.
Managing wildlife is one of his passions, and he planted numerous food plots every year in order to provide food and cover for deer and other game. The problem was the equipment available was too big to take into areas where food plots needed to be located.
The Plotmaster is an all-in-one machine that's small enough to be used behind an ATV, garden tractor, small utility tractor, pickup, or SUV. It mounts on wheels so it can be pulled down the road. And at about 40 in. wide, it fits into the back of a pickup.
The all-in-one design includes a disk for breaking up soil in front of field cultivator S-shanks with 8-in. sweeps. Behind the cultivator gang is a hopper fitted with an adjustable electric drop seeder that can handle seed sizes from clover to corn.
Bringing up the rear is a cultipacker that can be filled with water to insure good seed-to-soil contact in freshly worked soil.
The Plotmaster comes with both a 3-pt. hitch (will fit Category 0, I or II hitches) and a tongue so it can be attached to a drawbar or 2 in. ball hitch. It comes standard with a manual lift system, but a 12-volt electric lift is optional. Tongue height, depth and angle of cut for the disk harrow and depth of the field cultivator gang are all easily adjusted by moving pins.
The basic unit weighs 540 lbs. empty. Weight of seed and water in the cultipacker can also increase its ability to cut through grass and tough soils.
The Plotmaster is intended to till and plant in one pass, but it can be used for tillage alone or to till and broadcast fertilizer from the seed hopper. Burley has put together a number of attachments for it, too, including a compactor, 10-in. moldboard plow, rolling basket, grain drill, one-row precision planter, sprayer, aerator, scraper blade, and rake.
The manual lift unit sells for $2,195. The electric lift system adds another $300 to the list price.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Blaine Burley, Woods-N-Water, Inc., 311 N. Marcus St., Wrightsville, Georgia 31096 (ph 888 440-9108; E-mail: bburley@nlamerica.com; Website: www.theplotmaster.com).
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