Watermelon Transplanting Videos

For my next installment of Watermelon Elementary, I have finally uploaded videos – as promised!

Look at the little babies ready to get in their warm beds!

See the seeds stuck to the leaves?

Stacked up in the trailer waiting for transplanting.

Now for the videos… The first two videos are of the transplanting rig and the crew as they plant the watermelons. You can see the empty racks on each side of the transplanter. These racks hold the flats of watermelons to be transplanted. They allow the tractor to stay in the field longer since they don’t have to get new flats every time they finish just one. At this point they are about to break to refill the transplanter and for lunch.

Transplanting watermelons

Blair talks about watermelons (and the Baby Bowee) at the end of the next one.

A closer view of the watermelon transplanting

Here is where they break for lunch and get a ride back to the trucks and where they will reload the transplanter. The transplanter picks the crew up just like this at the end of each row. If they were going to keep planting the tractor would turn around, start down another row, and put the crew back on the ground!

Breaking for lunch

Riding to break for lunch.

Last, the crew loads the plant flats from the storage truck onto the transplanter.

Empty transplanter!

Loading the transplanter with watermelon plants.

They take the flats off of the truck and restock.

All full and ready to go!

Our future crew member got some practice, too!