noise."Worldbuilding XII: Farming part 3: Planting · 12:03am Oct 2nd, 2018
Now that the fields are plowed, it's time to plant them.
There are broadly two different ways to accomplish this. Either you put the seeds underground, or you sow them on top of the ground.
In its simplest form, sowing is just flinging a bunch of seeds over the ground. That's obviously how a lot of plants reproduce in nature; a maple tree can't really depend on someone digging holes and putting its offspring in them,* so they land on top of the ground and some of them find a good place to start growing.
Farmers, naturally, prefer a more certain method.
_______________________________________
*It’s worth noting that this method does work for oak trees, although they rely on squirrels rather than humans.
The other big disadvantages of just flinging out seeds is that they tend to not grow evenly—you'd have bare patches, and others where the plants are too thick—and there are also lots of animals that like to eat seeds, especially when they're exposed on bare ground and therefore simple to find.
The first big improvement over the flinging seeds around method was the seed broadcaster. There are various different arrangements which overall try to accomplish the goal of flinging out seeds at an even pace as you move along, thus giving decent coverage. Even something as simple as a somewhat metered hole in a bag or bucket could accomplish this. Generally, though, they have a flinging wheel that spreads the seeds around. They're usually designed for an ideal speed to get the best coverage, and range from the simplest handheld units to somewhat complicated machines.
For ponies, it's easy to imagine some kind of planting saddlebags or panniers that are filled with seeds which trickle out at an appropriate pace as the pony walks. Technologically, that would be a quite simple arrangement, and improved designs might have some sort of mechanism on the bottom that also scatters seeds under where the pony walks. A shuttle-bar or rope arrangement could attach to a leg, so it's only depositing seeds while the pony moves.
Larger seed broadcasters could be towed behind one pony. Those would fling the seeds over a wider arc, and they're typically driven by the wheels, so when the broadcaster stops, so do the seeds.
That doesn't solve the problem of birds eating your seeds, of course, which brings us to the grain drill.
That machine—usually towed by a team of horses—is called a grain drill or a seed drill, and it has a number of 'runs,' which is to say, how many seeds wide it deposits.
There are a lot of different designs, but the basic concept is a hopper full of seeds which are then metered through tubes and into the ground (most of them have small cutting plows in front of each tube). Once the seed has been dropped, a chain or angled wheels or some other arrangement behind the drill covers the seed.
Horse-pulled seed drills looked to have something like five runs if it was pulled by one horse and about a dozen if it was pulled by two. Obviously, the ones that go behind tractors can be much larger.
There were also wider drills that could be used for things like corn. Those would typically only have two different runs, since you needed the rows to be wide enough to be cultivated.
[It's also worth mention here that a lot of times cover crops were planted along with the main crops. For hay, clover was often planted at the same time—the idea was that the clover would grow first and provide cover for the hay and also choke out any weeds that might try to grow in your field.]
For the ponies, seed drills would be used. Instead of an operator on the drill, you'd have some sort of arrangement to shut off the flow of seed for when you reached the end of the field and needed to turn around, but otherwise you'd just let it run automatically—the wheels turning sets the pace at which seeds are dropped.
There would also be some sort of sight glass. If the machine malfunctions or runs out of seeds, you can't really tell from up front, since the whole idea of the machine is that it covers the seeds. The last thing you want is to find out when you're done planting that the machine stopped working or ran out of seeds somewhere along the line, with no idea of where that was.
IRL, the operator can look down and see the seeds before they're covered, and it's easy to lift the lid on the seed bin.
Odds are that some of the seed drills would have an operator's seat on them—a foal-sized seat. That way, the quantity of seed in the bin and the operation of the machine could be constantly monitored without the pulling ponies having to constantly look back to see how it had done.
Other crops would be planted the old-fashioned way. Generally, that means dropping the seeds in the furrows that you've prepared before, or else making fresh holes in your disked field. In most cases, once that was done, you'd cover them up with dirt.
There are now machines for just about every type of crop imaginable, both to plant and harvest it. Some of them are too modern for ponies—giant shakers for tree nuts, for example—but more importantly even if a particular machine exists, a lot of farms wouldn't have a huge demand for them, and it's only worth investing in equipment for something that you plant a lot of.
For example, Golden Harvest's farm almost certainly has a dedicated carrot planter and probably also a carrot harvester. They plant enough carrots it would be worth it.
Maybe they also plant a small patch of tomatoes, too, but there's no way they'd bother with a tomato planter. They just wouldn't plant enough volume of tomatoes for it to be worth buying that particular piece of equipment.
The only pony in town who might own one of those is Roma.
Or maybe they just kick the tress and the harvest fall in line by itself? Is it not how the Apple are operating at the very least?
I suppose that if the cartoon ever goes around showing us a carrot harvest, Golden Harvest would simply kick the ground near her field and the carrots would jump out of the ground and neatly fall where she want it. Now is that really doable in a more serious fic is up to you.
Was it entirely coincidental that Clover is a legume and thus generates nitrogen fertiliser for the hay?
4946910
That was my first thought.
As an aside, I love these Worldbuilding posts :-)
Assuming we're holding pretty true to the cartoon, ponies might not have such a problem with birds. They can just have their local animal tender come out and ask the birds to lay off eating the crop seeds. Or, potentially more feasibly, the farmer might set aside a portion of their seeds for the animal tender to feed the birds on planting days, so the birds are more agreeable to suggestions of leaving the plating seeds alone.
4946910
Initially? Probably. But once one farmer saw how the hay was growing better when clover was around, then they made it no longer coincidental. People are funny that way.
4946714
I would call that an Earth Pony speciality, shock wave harvesting. You get a circular propagation from a single hoof or multiple point impactor, the trick is landing asymetrically so the resulting iterference waves from the impacts of the different hooves cause different shock propagation patterns.
The Earth ponies at the front of the battle formation might be the tanks, but the Heavy Slammers out back are the ones creating subsurface shockwaves that are phased to focus in enemy lines. Maybe even under enemy HQ.
Thing is if you get the Heavy Slammers leveled up enough, its been demonstrated they can use Grand Slam feat to hit ANY target, even an Air Dragon hovering on the edge of space.
It's also fairly common to start plants in planters (typically located in greenhouses) and then replant them outside at a later point. It's easier to plant, you don't have to worry about animals eating them, and you can start growing them earlier.
4947003 I was thinking the exact same thing. The local farmers go to their animal liaison/version-of-Fluttershy, and this individual gets the local birds and wildlife to accept a pile of seeds in the corner equal to about 10-20% of the ones planted.
4946714
I personally don’t think that would happen, but if it did ever happen in an episode, I’d probably be rolling on the floor laughing.
4946721
I don’t remember if they said in the episode what they were planting--I’d have to look it up.
Regardless, any special equipment that any particular farm would have would almost certainly be geared towards their main crop or crops. So they might borrow a corn-planter from somepony else, or they might just plant it manually, likewise for any other crops they kept.
I think that the one biggest exception would be that virtually all farms would grow pasture grasses (assuming ponies do require them as part of their diet, anyway), and most of the larger farms would have appropriate planting and harvesting equipment for that.
4946910
It is not. I bet that somebody figured out pretty quick that the two of them pair really well together. And I’m sure the ponies know that, too.
4946916
4947003
I think whenever possible, that would be done. It’s a lot easier if you can get most of the animals onboard and not eating your crops. Just the same, most mechanized planters are going to work more quickly than doing it by hoof, which is probably an advantage to big fields. Also, I can’t help but wonder if sometimes there are bidding wars between different farmers (say, AJ is willing to pay Fluttershy to not keep pests off Golden Harvest’s crop).
There are a lot of pests, and I think even for a pony like Fluttershy, it might be difficult to keep them all off all the fields. But--having said that--if they can persuade the animals to leave the crops alone, even if that means always leaving some seeds out for birds and mice and whatnot--I think ponies would do that.
4947071
I like this headcanon.
4947097
I think a lot of that depends both on the plant and the size of the farm. While it’s not undoable to plant a 40 acre field with seedlings, in a lot of cases it’s easier to just plant seeds. I think in general ponies would raise plants from seed in the ground, but I’m sure there are exceptions to that. We do of course know that they transplant trees, so obviously the idea of starting a plant one place and then moving it later has occurred to them.
During my research, I did come across multiple modern mechanized seedling planters, for what that’s worth.
img.agriexpo.online/images_ag/photo-g/170225-10354808.jpg
4947160
IMHO, it’s debatable that one pony could convince all the animals around town to not eat crops out in the field; on the other hand, any reduction in predation is better than none, and I suppose if you kept it up for a while, the animals would learn.
Also, I suppose that Fluttershy could increase her effective patrol area (so to speak) by hiring birds of prey as enforcers. “If the sparrows eat from that pile of seeds over there, you leave them alone. If they go out in the field to get seeds, you can eat them.”
derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/9/2/88765__safe_artist-colon-kittenshy_fluttershy_may+the+best+pet+win_animal_bald+eagle_bird_eagle_falcon_pegasus_peregrine+falcon_pony_simple+background_.png
...the more I think about it, the more I realize that Fluttershy could be the most dangerous pony in Ponyville.
4947193
For some reason, Im having a certain song play in my head at this.
Immigrant Song?
4947193 Well, she has this house that's directly between Ponyville and the Everfree Forest. And she appears to be the town's wildlife control officer, so she's probably who Ponyville used to expect to keep Everfree monsters from roaming into town.
And her using raptors as enforcers does make Flutters sound a bit like a mob boss...
4947196
derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/10/25/131773__safe_artist-colon-artdude529_carrot+top_golden+harvest_carrot.jpg
4947193
"...the more I think about it, the more I realize that Fluttershy could be the most dangerous pony in Ponyville."
Now we finally see where Fluttershy gets her income from !!
So many fics either paint Fluttershy as a poor, good-willed pony or in receipt of local government handouts for her wild animal charity work.
Given the nature of Ponyville as a farming town, Fluttershy could be making a nice nest from her services rendered to the farmers.
So, the most terrifying pony and one of the most financially secure, given her ability.
Wow.
4947248
Yeah . . . I’ve thought for a long time that while she might keep some of the wild animals around as a hobby, she’s not earning her money that way, nor is she somehow being funded by the Crown as either a vet or as some kind of wild animal rescue--I think there’s a very good chance that her abilities with animals make her a natural fit in a farming town, and lots of ponies are surely willing to pay her a small sum to keep their crops free of predation . . . and those small sums add up.
I don’t think she’s rolling in the bits, but I think she’s doing well enough, and she’s likely to never be lacking for money.