The beans have been sprouting over the last few days and the stand and spacing is looking good. There are some skips in it but there's time for those seed beans to still come up. The seeds were some I bought last year from Willhite Seed. Even the first few feet of beans where I had trouble with the seeder look pretty good. The jury's still out on this first planting but I'm warming up to the little seeder. I am thinking that the round zipper cream cow peas will work even better in the seeder than the long curved beans and should make the larger planting of the zippers *much* more enjoyable than it has been in the past years...and will save my knees, too!!!
I'm probably going to limit myself to planting beans and peas with the seeder. Smaller seeds and their spacing I think (for me) will work better hand planting. Also, no longer of a row than I plant of okra I'll probably just hand plant it, too...but I reserve the option to "experiment" with the okra.
As it stands now, I'm very happy with the Earthway seeder. Even if the beans end up requiring some replanting of skips, which I usually have to do anyhow, it appears that with some attention the seeder will do a good job even in the hands of a rookie like me!
I think the real test/proof will be the long rows of cow peas!
