Check Planter First Real Step Toward Mechanization
Implement ended era of hand-sowing crops
By Gary Van Hoozer
It's an image almost incomprehensible today: Picture a farmer walking a plowed field, planting corn (or cotton, or potatoes, or other crops) by making seed holes with hoes, "dibble sticks," or simple drop devices, then manually covering and tamping each hole.
As recently as 150 years ago, crops were hand-sown. By the early 1800s, though, mechanization became inevitable. Development of hand-pushed planters, then the horsedrawn drill-planter, and finally, the check-row/check-line planter, moved agriculture into a new era.
The earliest mention of check-row planting found in patent reports occurred in the 1840s, say Jim Goedert and Larry Greer in their book, "Planter Wire: A Patent History and Collector's Catalog." The check-row planter got under way in earnest in 1857, when Martin Robbins, a Hamilton, Ohio, farmer, was granted the first known check-line planter patent.
Goedert and Greer report that the last patent evidence found of check-line use was issued in 1939 to C.K. Shedd, Ames, Iowa for a four-row planter. As late as 1952, the Inter-national Harvester Company was still making the McCormick No. 240 Two-Row Check-Row Planter.
Early planters are difficult to find intact, except in some museums. But related items are available and avidly sought by collectors. Plus, lots of planter literature, drawings and photographs - collectibles in themselves - are also available. Paper items include patent descriptions and illustrations, advertising materials and educational articles and booklets.
Popular planter items include planter plates, seedbox lids and wrenches. Check-planters have their own related collectible items, including check-line rope and wire, anchors, reels, tighteners and planter parts.
Check-planter planting systems were designed to place hills of corn in checkerboard fashion, each about the same distance from its immediate neighbor. Thus a field could be cultivated first in the direction it was planted, later cultivated 90 degrees the other way, and finally, laid-by in the original direction. This was very effective for weed control, especially for tough ones like cockle-bur.
Meanwhile, the usual objective of three corn plants per hill resulted in yields comparable to those achieved when using drills. A 1903 USDA report says hill dropping benefits were mostly due to cleaner cultivation, but drilled rows provided a more equal distribution of roots.
While it's difficult to find farmers who've actually check-planted, collectors and restorers congregate at antique farm shows. Many retired farmers remember seeing the planters in action. Chester Larson, Griswold, Iowa, is one of them.