Pumkin planter plates?

[cjpenny89]

I have the Cub 1 row planter and I am planting a huge pumokin patch for the kids to sell pumpkins.
Did IH ever make a pumpkin seed plate? Or does anyone know if any other seed plates out there might work for pumpkins? I do have a bunch of plates but I do not know what the numbers are in relation to the seeds.
I only ask this becasue I just talked to an older farmer who said growing up they planted pumpkin patches with a JD 4 row planter and they bought specialty seed plates for that.
anyone have any ideas?

[markwayne]

One thing to consider is do you want hill drop or single drop? If you have the most common planter that takes flat plates you can get blank plastic (Lustran?) plates and custom up your own. You could try looking for some plates for seeds around the same size and put up with maybe a bit less than perfect placement. Try something (from ebay?) like velvet bean plates, they were popular back in the 40's-50's for green cover, soil improvement, forage, till soybeans got all sexy. they might drop im guessing 1 or 2 seeds at a time.

[cjpenny89]

I am not sure what planter or fertilizer unit I have. I guess I need to learn the terms flat plate or hill type. I have 4 different seed hoppers so maybe there all different.
Chad

[Jim Becker]

I couldn't find any referecne to plates for pumpkin. I think I would try to find a hill drop plate that would take 3 or 4 seeds per cell (especially if the seed size isn't uniform). If you have multiple choices on sprockets, I would probably try to slow the planter as much as possible to open up the space between hills. If that didn't appear to work out, I would start looking for flat drop plates that would handle the seed size.

I see a couple flat drop plates that are 5/32 thick and require 1/8 filler ring that might be a starting point:
1903A 12x5/32 cell, melon and cucumber
3143A 5/8x5/16 cell, sunflower.

[SONNY]

Can you post us some pics of what you have?---I think we can help steer you in the right direction if we could see for sure what you are working with!!-----There are custom plates, and you can drill your own blanks, as said, just need to get the right hole size/shape to fit your seed.---I used to have a seed cell dimension chart in an old planter book. these dimensions would give a starting point to work from! thanks; sonny

[markwayne]

If you can lay hands on one of the plastic blanks (try the IH dealer whats to loose?) make only one hole in it to start and guess on the small side and test it on the bench. Then try increasing it slightly till you get what you want. now make even spaced guide lines (did you pay attention in geometry class ) for the number of holes you need to get the spacing you want 2 or 4 or 6. likely four and make the rest the same size.

[cjpenny89]

Guys I will get you some pics. When I use my corn planter to plant corn it seems like it plants 3 or 4 seeds per hols and really close together. I have lots to learn. I do know I don't have any extra gears to slow it down. I thought if I could make a new seed plate just put in fewer holes. I know it will take work.
I will probably not have time to do it this year but it would be nice for future plantings.
Chad

[Trent M]

There was an IH publication called Planting Information - Combination and Richmond Type Hoppers for McCormick Planters. Bob in CT sent it to me in .pdf format, but I can't email it from here. I'm sure Bob would send it to you. When you print it out at the correct scale, it has pictures of the cell size for many, many of the IH planter plates. You take a sample seed, orient it as indicated, and lay it on the space shown to match up seed size. You might find a plate with the proper size openings. Then, like Jim said, you'll need to get the spacing how you want it. You could try to cover, say, every other opening in the plate to increase spacing.

[Jim Becker]

If you have the later style combination hopper, you can get 2 different speeds out of it by moving a drive pin from one pinion gear to the other. You can see the 2 different pinion gears when the hopper is removed from the base.

[bob in CT]

I can tell you the melon seed plate is not going to work for most pumpkin seeds. The cells are far too small. I have been looking for a sunflower plate for a year. Have not see one yet. You can buy them in plastic for about $17 each from Lincoln Ag Products and then you can reshape them. Looks like I will be buying plastic sunflower plates or I could go to IH and buy a brandy-new one for $73!

I do have that cell manual which is pretty handy to figure out what will fit on paper before buying lots of plates for trial and error. Especially now that they are being bid up so high.

Bob

[markwayne]

I think the original style cast planter plates have gone crazy price wise because of the country artsy fartsy new thing of making them into flowers. People (that should be taken out behind the wood shed and given a severe beating) are welding them to rods for stems and adding sheet metal leaves, painting them up and calling it yard art and getting big bucks for them.

[bob in CT]

I know you are right on that. I collect plates and I have save a few from sculptures and recovered them from duty as trivets. When you see a lot of plate being bid up to $90 by 2 newbies it is a sure bet the artist community is out to play. If they would only restrict themselves to 1978 corn plates we would be OK

There was an auction a while back for JD pumpkin plates. 2 for $102. Brand new with the proper filler plate at the dealer for $42.

[Virginia Mike]

I used to plant a lot of pumpkins for sale at the farmers market. Plant spacing is a problem with planters even closing all but one cell.
The best method of planting I found was to place 3-4 seed in a packet made from folded toilet paper and set the packets with a transplanter. The TP pouch make them easy to handle.
This gives you the 3-4 foot plant spacing you need.
Best,
Mike