The Standing Transplanter: Set Out Plants Without Stooping

"The object of this invention is to provide a tool or implement with which sweet-potato, cabbage, and other plants can be expeditiously set out or planted in the ground, and with but very little manual labor, the implement embraced by the present improvements not requiring the person using it to stoop, which by the mode hitherto practiced for the setting out of such plants with the hands occasioned much pain in the person's back". The plant is "forced into the ground, and to any desired depth, by simply exerting more or less force upon the staff", after which the ram "is forced down, pressing the earth around and about the plant", and "is drawn back by the action of the spiral spring G".

Raise lettuce seedlings in a seedling tray. Take a broom handle as the staff and fix a wedge-shaped hardwood foot to its lower end. Screw two long hardwood strips to its sides as tongs, hinged at the top, so their lower ends pinch a seedling's stem when squeezed together. Beside the staff, fit a sliding dowel with a flat foot as the ram, guided by two screw eyes and pulled back up by a spring. Set out one row with the transplanter and one by hand with the trowel. Time each row, and note how often you had to bend.

**Edmund W. Packer** of Paulsborough, Gloucester County, New Jersey, received US 53,662, dated 3 April 1866. The patent prints no filing date. **Honest limits.** The notebook treats the upper body as one weight at one distance. It is a rough guide to how the back load grows, not a medical figure. The masses and distances are examples. Your timed rows are the measurement.