Planting Faster and Straighter

Three kinds of planting happen across the project: saplings, slips or rows, and seeds. All are placed by hand. Depth, spacing and placement vary with whoever is doing it and how tired they are.

Planting is slow, and inconsistent planting costs twice. It costs labour hours now, and it costs yield later, because a sapling planted too deep or too close to its neighbour grows badly. The project describes planting as one of its highest-frequency tasks, which makes it a strong candidate for an early win.

Mechanical planters exist for single crops at industrial scale. This project plants three different things in different layouts, in blocks rather than long rows, sometimes on uneven ground. A machine built for one of those cases is useless for the others, and buying three is not affordable.

• Branch — Mechanical.
• Technical skills — Jig and fixture design, mechanism design, ergonomics, fabrication, materials, time and motion measurement, cost engineering.
• Other skills — Observing work as it is actually done, iterating with the people who use the tool, resisting over-engineering.