Field vacuum seeder

From the establishment of the first nursery in 1896 to 1956 the sowing of tree seed was by hand at all the Ontario nurseries. This was a slow but very efficient use of tree seed by the highly competent persons used for this purpose. The expansion of reforestation in the postwar years and the replacement of horses with tractors brought about a search for the high-capacity, inefficient seed drill adapted from agriculture to meet the demand for the annually increasing seedbed areas at the 10 provincial nurseries. The range of seeders varied from the Gandy to the highly recommended Oyjord seeder of today in the constant search to cut down the waste of tree seed with these mechanical dispensers, which require two to nine viable seeds for every shippable seedling. The first operational vacuum seeder to make its appearance in Ontario, and possibly in Canada, was a crude design put together by two Canadians of Japanese origin in the late 50s or early 60s near the town of Chatham. This seeder eliminated the labor required to thin and space mechanically drilled sugar beets and turnips by spacing the seed with the aid of a household vacuum running off the 12-volt system of the tractor. The next vacuum seeder was built by E.O. Nyborg (Nyborg 1972) in 1970 at the University of British Columbia in connection with the "Kinghorn Blocks" containers. It is now produced by the Vancouver Bio-Machines Systems Ltd. It was Nyborg's invention and the Vancouver Bio-Machines Systems Ltd. that enabled us to produce the first prototype precision vacuum seeder and the subsequent operational model.

Download this file:

Download this file

Details

Author(s): G. Brown

Publication: National Nursery Proceedings - 1981

Event: Proceedings of the 1981 Intermountain Nurserymen's Association meeting
1981 - Edmonton, Alberta