Late 19th to Early 20th Century New Aspinwall Potato Planter

Made sometime between the 1890s and the early 1920s in Jackson, Michigan, this Aspinwall potato planter would have made life a lot easier for a farmer who grew potatoes as a major crop. Throughout North America, including the prairie, many farmers and their families would have dedicated a great deal of time and energy to the potato planting process; and just as the Hoover potato digger in this exhibit paid for itself many times over in its saving of time and energy during the harvesting season, so to did this potato planter during the planting season.

Even before using this planter, the potato planting process was quite involved. Prior to planting potatoes in the ground, a farmer needed to cut up a number of potato spuds that had produced eyes or sprouts. These eyes or sprouts would eventually grow into new plants. During the week before planting, the farmer and his family or hired hands would cut these potatoes in halves or quarters (or maybe in smaller pieces). When he was ready to begin planting, the farmer then loaded these recently cut potato seeds into two containers placed inside the metal frame at the back of this planter.

Here you can see the empty metal frame, the two chutes for
the potatoes to move down toward the grabbing blades, and
the two discs which pushed dirt over the planted seeds.

In order to use the planter, the farmer would hook it up to two horses using the wooden tongue you can see attached to the planter’s front. As the horses pulled the planter forward across the potato field, a wide blade at the planter’s front dredged a relatively shallow trench in the ground, about three or four inches deep, in which the potato seeds would be dropped.

Also, as the horses pulled the planter forward, two sets of blades inside the machine – they look somewhat like pizza cutter blades – rotated like a ferris wheel, being attached by gears to the planter wheels. As these sets of blades – there are two sets of three blades – moved around, they “grabbed” individual potato seeds. The design of the two chutes you can see from the walkway and of this rotating blade mechanism kept all of the seeds from falling down into the machine and onto the ground at once. This mechanism essentially replaced the centuries-old human motion of grabbing and placing potato seeds into the ground by hand. As these blades reached the trench in the ground, they would mechanically release the seed in order to drop it into the ground. By using this planter, a farmer might plant a seed every six inches in the trench, saving a significant amount of time and energy when compared to the older process of planting potatoes by hand.

One of the blades that grabbed the potato seeds can be seen
in the center of this photo. It rotated forward as the planter
was pulled forward, grabbing a seed from the chute on the
left side of this photo.

After the seeds were dropped into the trench, the two discs attached to the back of the planter, called shoes, pushed dirt over the seeds, completing the process. What took several people several days to do with back-breaking effort – digging, planting, and covering the seeds – took a team of two horses and a potato planter like this New Aspinwall a matter of a few days. In the long run, a farmer could save himself time and energy, as well as the money, food, and space needed to hire extra hands.

From Dun's Review, vol. IV, no.6 (February, 1905), page 80.

         The maker of this potato planter, the Aspinwall Manufacturing Company, was founded by Lewis Augustus Aspinwall in Three Rivers, Michigan in 1884. Aspinwall had been working on his potato planter since perhaps 1861. His planter became very successful soon after it went on the market, and about seven years after starting his company Aspinwall acquired new facilities to build his machines in Jackson, Michigan, in 1891. By 1900, the company not only made potato planters but just about every other machine related to the potato crop, including sprayers, cutters, sorters, and diggers. Aspinwall would continue to make its implements until the early 1920s when it closed its factory doors. A combination of increased competition and the agricultural depression of the early 1920s may have contributed to the company’s demise. In 1925, L. A. Aspinwall himself went to work for The McKenzie Manufacturing Company of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, at the age of 83, perhaps because they had purchased his line of potato implements. Aspinwall died in 1930, at the age of 88.

Notes

Two stories regarding Aspinwall and his company can be found in the online Farm Collector article by Sam Moore, “Aspinwall Manufacturing Company: First in Potato Machinery Leaves Murky Trail” (July, 2000), which can be found here.