One thing I’m excited about this year is that the projects on tap for this year should get the infrastructure to a point where I’m going to stop worrying about things falling down.  That’s not to say that things won’t fall down.  They will.  And that’s ok.

And now on to the 2nd meaning of spring.

Late last fall, something went wrong with the throttle on my Allis Chalmers D17.  A slight pull on the throttle bar on the steering column opened up the carb all the way and resulted in a red lined engine.  NOT GOOD.  Well, I stopped by the house of Sam, a fellow member of the Milton Grange, yesterday to look at his old D17 and he asked if I had the spring.  Now…this is definitely not stock or even something that Allis Chalmers ever intended, but this little spring provides just enough resistance to keep things from getting out of hand.

My theory is that the fundamental design of the governor isn’t all that good and this compensates for that.  Sam stated that the spring had been there as long as he could remember.  Works for me!  So SPRING!!!!

So on to the important thing! GARLIC!

On Saturday October 11th we were graced with the help of our friends (in no particular order) Jen, Heather, Erin, Jacqui, and Matthew. We got rolling around 10:30 and had a fairly tall order… Plant a lot of garlic. Kathleen and I had trimmed out all of the garlic heads in prep for the planting. What was left to do was a lot of shelling and planting.

I dibbled (above photo) and everyone got to work. To summarize quickly, we finished planting everything except for all of the German White by that evening. The next morning, Jen and I finished the German White. A few days later, I spread the straw. OK…now for the pics!

Garlic Before the Event

Erin & Jacqui

Kathleen, Heather and Jen

Matthew & Erin

Straw on Garlic

OK so before I got to the point at left, I got a can of clear coat spray paint to give the pine a bit more protection than…nothing. So it looks like plain old pine, but will hopefully not rot right away.

Once I did that I attached all of the 2″ l-brackets to the wood at the pre-marked places. I used 3/4″ wood screws.

Next step was to cut all of that PVC. Per the instructions I found out yonder on the interwebs, I cut a bunch of 4″ sections and then tried to cut the angles. After a few exploded pieces (always wear safety glasses…seriously) I finally figured out that it wasn’t happening. I sucked it up and bought another 5′ section of 2″ PVC. This time I made a mark of the fence of my miter saw and alternated between 45º and 90º cuts. Once I had all 24 pieces of PVC, I set about marking them for drilling by setting them on on an L-bracket and marking it with a pencil.

Once I had them all drilled, I attached them with 1″ 8-32 machine screws a locknut and a nut. In retrospect, I could have gone with a 1/2″ machine screw.

One more note about those screws. The original instructions call for 1/4″ screws. Their 2″ brackets must have larger holes because the 1/4″ ones didn’t even come close to fitting. When you do this, just keep track of your hardware receipts. You may find that you need to make an extra trip to bring a bunch of it back.

I attached all of the dibbler points. I then slipped the T over the nipples that go into the flanges on the ends of the plywood. The next step with these T’s will be to build the handle on them.

Beyond the T’s are 5 pound weights and then an endcap.

I’m finding that a 6″ nipple may be overkill and 5″ would have done fine. I think it’s, in part due to the fact that the weights illustrated in the original article are much wider.

In any case….ta-da! Here it is. It looks to me like some space buoy from a third rate sci-fi flick. I can’t wait to try it out.
Next update will be the handle and also a revised parts list and rough cost assuming I can find all of the receipts.

Good morrow…..Paul

• Tonight, I cut out the plywood ends using the template that I posted in the last post. I used a table saw for the rough plywood cuts and a jigsaw to make the ends into the 12 sided beauty you see there.

• Next, I attached the flanges to the center of the plywood pieces with (8) 3/4″ wood screws.

• I then cut 12 – 2′ sections of 1×3 and attached them to the ends using (24) 2″ drywall screws which is what I had lying around.

Now for the stupid part. In my last post I stated that with a 2′ drum I could only have 3 across. This was based on my dividing 6″ (my intra row spacing) into 2′. The answer to that is, of course, 4. However, I didn’t want my dibbles going all the way to the edge of the drum so I subtracted one. What I forgot is that zero counts. I’m a dope.

• Finally (once I figured it out) I made markings on every other wood slat at 3″,9″,15″ and 21″. If you click on the photo to see the large version, you can see my first attempt at laying out the spacing (dots with x’s through them) and my corrected attempt (dots with circles).

That’s it for tonight. The next task is to cut and assemble the dibbles from the PVC sections. Next update…sometime next week. I have to dig potatoes tomorrow.

So…how do I get a perfectly spaced planting of garlic without spending a fortune on a transplanter?

Enter the rolling dibbler. The University of Wisconsin has published a how-to guide for building one of these. The picture to the left is from their website.
credit: University of Wisconsin Healthy Farmers,Healthy Profits Project, November, 2000; Third Edition

In addition to this Paul Betz wrote up an article in an issue of the Seed Bin from High Mowing Seeds. If you follow the link, you can see that his version is made almost exclusively of wood and is quite a bit smaller.

OK…Step 1. I went to gather up all of the materials at the local hardware/plumbing outlets. Everything was readily available except for the 12″ PVC for the drum. I was told I could buy a 20′ section for $155. Um…no. Since I need just a little more than 2′ for this one drum it’d be a huge waste for me.

This put me back to the drawing board and made me realize that there were inherent advantages to both designs. The removable handle on the U of W design would come in very handy if I build more than one drum (which is likely). The Paul Betz design allows me to make the drum any size to accomodate exact spacings.

Like his design, I’m going with a regular dodecagon or twelve sided design. Since my spacing is 6″ I need some multiple of that for the circumference of my roller. I’m settling on 36″. Now that I have my circumference, I use Circumference / π = diameter to get the total diameter of my roller. In this case, the answer is 11.46″ which I promptly round up to 11.5″. I’m not going to mess around with hundredths. This is the point where you can’t forget that those 1×3′s are going to add thickness as well. I subtract .75″ (yes, a 1×3 is .75″ thick and 2.5″ wide) and see that the diameter of my plywood ends need to be 10.75″. The beauty of this approach is that you can get exactly the spacing you want. With the PVC pipe method, you’re tied to spacings that aren’t quite on the money. I anticipate that I’ll likely build a few of these with different spacings for different crops, so having the ability to get the exact spacings is a boon.

As I see it, figuring all of this out is the toughest part of the process, I’m keeping all of my other parts in line with the U of W guide (some hardware notwithstanding…more on that in a later installment). At this point I had to figure out how to make a regular dodecagon. I used that wikipedia link and (more or less) followed the instructions. To make your life easier, you can click on the picture to the left and print out your own template. This image is a 10.75″ dodecagon. If you don’t have a printer that can handle 11×17″ you’ll have to print out 2 and tape them together.

OK…that’s it for now. I’m going to start the build Wednesday night and will post updates with pictures as it goes along.