Seeder completely swallows small seeds

Hello,

We have just tried to seed our first seeds, but they are small enough to get completely sucked up the needle of the seeder, and then they’re… gone?

Did anybody encounter this problem and have a smartypants solution for this?

hi, did you try all 3 sized needles?

There is more than one needle? Ohhhh…

/me starts looking through the boxes again.

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You might want to see if you can get whatever seeds got sucked up into the pump out. I am not sure how other than removing the vacuum pump, disassembling as much as possible (without compromising the pump), and maybe gently tapping to get the seeds to fall out…

I think that the pump can handle it: at least it’s still working without any problem so far :slight_smile:

My question is more about making sure that the seeds stay on the tip of the needle so they actually get planted. As it is now no seeds get planted because they’re gone…

Ok, so your thought about rechecking the boxes for additional needles sounds like the direction to go. You should have three sizes - 16, 19 & 22 gauge.
Just out of curiosity - what type of seed are we talking about?
Also, just to make sure, is the hose connected to the vacuum side? I can see if it was on the purge side it would just blow the seed out of the bin.

If you still encounter this problem after you find the smallest needle, you can go to any pharmacy and purchase even smaller gauge needles that will attach to the seeder tool or you can order them directly from Amazon.

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If you want to avoid the seeding process completely it’s possible to sprout and plant the seedlings by hand and simply water and weed the plants using the Farmbot. You could likely save about 3 hours of programming work.

Thanks for all the helpful replies :-).

@Intelbotfarmer, I checked, the pump is connected correctly. Good to know that’s a thing.

@Marc, it turns out the largest size needle was mounted. The medium size turns out to be perfect. And re avoiding the seeding process: the whole point for us is that we automate as much as possible. We’d rather spend one week one code than 5 minutes on seeding: for SCIENCE! :slight_smile:

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