If your planting of Potatoes or Garlic is large-scale enough to justify it, we now offer a Ground-Driven Potato, Garlic & Onion Set Planter for Walk-behind tractors. This unit is built by the Italian company Marte in southern Italy.

The Cleated Steel Drive Wheels on the implement are a superior design compared with other planters on the market that use rubber pneumatic wheels; the rubber wheels can loose traction more easily in soft soils, plus, it’s another set of wheels to potentially go flat. These wheels power the chain-drive mechanism that lifts the seed crop out of the bin and drops it into the planting chute in the center; the chute is immediately behind an adjustable-depth furrow-plow in the middle that opens up a planting furrow. The adjustable self-cleaning disks on the back close up the furrow to cover the seed crop (they can be adjusted to just “close up the furrow”, or to “hill” the crop somewhat). The soil must be worked prior to using this implement…this will NOT “drill” crops into un-tilled soil!

The unit comes standard with 18 “large cups” (made of metal, for wear resistance) on the lifting mechanism, which are suitable for Potatoes ranging in size from 1.25” to 2” rough diameter. Also included are “small cup” inserts, for planting smaller potatoes, Garlic or Onion sets (crops ranging from .65” to 1.25” rough diameter). The smaller cups insert into the larger cups and are secured by a snap-ring.

Drop distance between “seeds” is adjustable by changing the location of the “cups” on the drive chain. With the standard 18 cups that it comes equipped with, spacing between seeds will be about 5”….this works great for garlic and onion sets. By removing half of the cups (2 bolts & nuts per cup), distance is increased to 10”, which works well for potatoes. There are 54 links on the chain, so other variances can be achieved by installing different numbers of cups (if the number of cups does not divide evenly by 54, you will end up with one “odd spacing” per rotation). The hopper holds up to 110 lbs of seed crop.

FITS THE FOLLOWING WALK-BEHIND TRACTOR MODELS: BCS 739, 749, 750, 852, 853, GRILLO G107, G110 AND G131, BARBIERI LEOPARD (requires specific tow hitches shown below)

Prices:

• May require wheel weights on tractor
• Minimum recommended tractor wheel size 5x10x20”
• Marte “MiniStar” Powered Planter: MSRP: $2499 Earth Tools Regular Sale price: $2200
• Tow hitch to fit BCS 749, 750, 852, 853: MSRP: $110 Earth Tools Regular Sale price: $100
• Tow hitch to fit Grillo G107: MSRP: $110 Earth Tools Regular Sale price: $100
• Tow hitch to fit Grillo G110: MSRP: $110 Earth Tools Regular Sale price: $100
• Tow hitch to fit Grillo G131: MSRP: $120 Earth Tools Regular Sale price: $110
• Tow hitch to fit Barbieri Leopard: MSRP: $130 Earth Tools Regular Sale price: $120