Vegetable growing: study of mechanized planting seedlings

Abstract

Transplanting machines do not fully comply with the agritechnical requirements for the process of planting seedlings. The working parts of current imported planting machines do not always correspond to the physical and mechanical properties of the soil on which it is planned to grow vegetables. The result is a lot of wear on the working parts of the planting machines or failures associated with the machine breaking down in the field while performing work. Preliminary field experiments on planting cabbage seedlings conducted in the early summer of 2023 at the “Polyus-Agro” farm in the village of Kremenchug revealed some design shortcomings of the carousel-type transplanting machine from the Italian company Checchi & Magli, such as: unevenness planting of seedlings; covering plants with soil; clogging of the press wheels and coulter with soil and plant remains. During the experiments, simultaneously with planting, the performance of the equipment for installing a drip irrigation system additional installed on the transplanting machine was also tested. Experiments have shown that this design can be improved by design and technological parameter optimization, which will eliminate the listed disadvantages and improve the quality of planting seedlings.