Allison Rosenberg

For this project, my group was tasked with the following question: how can we make the process of transplanting seedlings easier, faster, and more ergonomic for small-scale farmers? We began by researching the transplanting process and available transplanting products. Transplanting is the process of transferring seedlings grown in greenhouses to the field, and without any kind of assistance it can be time- and labor-intensive. Most available tools target large-scale farms (and are very expensive); there are very few targeted at small-scale farmers and listed at a price they could afford.

We brainstormed ideas for the design of the transplanting tool, and narrowed them down to two promising options: a cart and a backpack (my sketches of the two ideas are above). With the backpack, seedlings are stored in columns in a rack that the user wears on his/her back, and they are fed out one by one to a tray at his/her side; the user then takes a seedling and drops it through a tube into a hole that s/he has dug with a spade at the end of the tube. For the cart, spoked front wheels dig holes for the seedlings; seedlings stored on trays in the center of the cart are placed into compartments that open and drop the seedlings through tubes into the holes. We decided to move forward with the backpack concept, because while the cart would hold more seedlings, the backpack would be cheaper to produce and better able to adapt to changing crop spacings.

We first made a sketch model of the backpack using foam core, and then constructed a prototype using aluminum, acrylic, and PVC tubing. The prototype was able to successfully store, feed out, and plant seedlings.

The tube prototype. The tubing was square and hollow, through which a 2-3" seedling could pass.

The feed-out mechanism. A rotating belt, advanced by the user, feeds out the seedlings.