Planting tulips, hops and ginseng with a garlic planter
Short answer: yes. The PL-22 plants tulips, ginseng, hops, turmeric, squash and cucumbers as well as garlic. Potatoes work too, but need an adaptation to the machine. What it is really built for is any crop planted from a clove, bulb, set, rhizome or large seed, placed by hand at a set spacing and depth.
The name says garlic because garlic is what it was designed around. The mechanism is more general than the name.
Why the machine transfers
Strip the PL-22 down to what it actually does and there is nothing garlic-specific about it. It:
- opens a furrow at a set depth,
- holds row-to-row spacing across the bed,
- meters in-row spacing through the planting wheels,
- carries two seated people who place one planting unit at each station,
- closes the row behind.
Nothing in that list cares whether the thing in the rider’s hand is a garlic clove or a tulip bulb. Which is exactly why the crops that work are the crops that share garlic’s planting problem: a lumpy, irregular planting unit that has to go in the right way up, at a consistent spacing, and that a mechanical metering system handles badly.
The confirmed crops
These are crops we have seen work, or that a customer has told us about directly. If it is not on this list, we have not confirmed it — see the end of this article.
| Crop | Planting unit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Garlic | Clove | What the machine was designed for |
| Tulips | Bulb | Planted the same way as garlic |
| Ginseng | Root / seed | |
| Hops | Rhizome | |
| Turmeric | Rhizome | |
| Squash | Seed | |
| Cucumbers | Seed | |
| Potatoes | Seed piece | Needs an adaptation to the machine — talk to us first |
Row-to-row spacing is adjustable. In-row spacing is set by the planting wheels, which are made to your spacing — so if you are running two crops at genuinely different in-row spacings, that is a conversation to have before the machine is built, not after. Changing in-row spacing later means a different set of wheels, not a lever.
Tulips and cut-flower farms
Tulips are the closest analogue to garlic on the list, and the transfer is almost exact. A bulb, root plate down, placed at a spacing, in a bed, in the autumn.
Flower farms hit the same wall garlic growers do, on the same calendar. Tulips go in during a narrow window in the fall, the planting unit is expensive relative to the area it occupies, and the whole job is people on their knees for two weeks. If you are planting tens of thousands of bulbs by hand and losing your crew to it, the constraint you have is the constraint the PL-22 was built for.
The other thing that transfers is orientation. A tulip bulb planted sideways or inverted comes up crooked, the same way a garlic clove does. A person placing each bulb sorts that; a cup-and-belt planter does not. We wrote about why orientation matters more than raw speed for garlic, and the argument is the same for bulbs generally.
Hops, ginseng and turmeric
Rhizomes and roots share the awkward-geometry problem. A hop rhizome is a length of irregular root with buds along it; turmeric is a knuckled hand. Neither of these is something a mechanical metering cup grips reliably, and both benefit from a person deciding which way the piece lies in the furrow.
Ginseng and hops also sit in a useful economic bracket. They are high-value perennial or semi-perennial plantings where establishment quality determines returns for years, not months. Getting a hop yard planted evenly and at a consistent depth is worth more than getting it planted fast.
We list these as verified because growers of them have used the machine. What we do not have is planting-rate data by crop. The 600–800 per rider per hour figure we publish is a garlic number, and we are not going to restate it as a tulip number or a hop number because we have not measured those.
Squash, cucumbers and potatoes
Squash and cucumbers are large seed. The value here is precision placement at a wide spacing on prepared beds, rather than throughput — these are crops where you plant far fewer units per acre than garlic and each one matters.
Potatoes are the one entry on the list with an asterisk, and it is a real one. Potatoes need an adaptation to the machine. A seed piece is bigger, wetter and more fragile than a clove, and the standard configuration does not simply handle it. That is not a small footnote — it means a phone call before you order, so we know what you are planting when the machine is built. Do not order a standard PL-22 planning to run potatoes through it.
What doesn’t transfer
Three things, stated plainly.
Garlic is what it is optimised for. Every design decision — the wheel spacing options, the furrow geometry, the seat and tray layout, the pace the whole thing runs at — was made for cloves. The other crops work; they were not the design brief. What the PL-22 offers on them is one machine, built to your beds, that places each unit by hand the right way up across several crops — tell us which crops at the quote stage so the wheels are made for them.
The undercutter was built for garlic. The UC-36 and UC-48 are specified for lifting garlic at 6 to 8 inches below the bulb. Doug’s view is that they should work for any root crop, potatoes and onions included, since the blade loosens the whole bed from underneath. Garlic is where they have the track record, so tell us the crop when you call.
We only claim what we have confirmed. Onion sets are on the list: we build a dedicated planting wheel for them, and the onion article covers it. Shallots are the obvious next question — small bulbs, planted much like garlic. Nobody has told us they have done it yet, so they are not on the list, though Doug expects them to work with the onion wheel. If you plant shallots, tell us how it goes.
The honest fit test
The machine suits you if:
- your planting unit is a clove, bulb, set, rhizome or large seed,
- orientation or precise placement affects what you harvest,
- you would rather have two people seated on a machine, with a third on the tractor, than depend on finding a crew on their knees at planting time,
- and you are anywhere from under an acre up to roughly twenty acres — the band where a semi-automatic machine places every unit by hand and still does everything else.
Small plantings are squarely who it is built for: the rate holds through the afternoon, every unit goes in the right way up, and the machine is built to your own beds and row spacing. The hand-planting comparison works through the labour arithmetic for one acre of garlic.
The full crops list is on the site, and the PL-22 specifications are there too. For anything not on the confirmed list, call Doug on 519-379-6210 or email doug@velocityfarmequipment.com — the answer will be what we know, including when that is nothing.
Keep reading
-
Garlic crop rotation: what to grow between and how long to wait Rotation is cheap disease control that only works if the break is real: long enough, free of allium volunteers, and not planted to a crop that hosts the same pests. -
When to cut garlic scapes, and why it matters Scaping is a June labour pass that protects bulb size, and it produces the first thing a garlic farm has to sell all year. When to do it, how, and what the scapes are worth to you. -
Mulching garlic for winter: timing, depth and spring Winter mulch is there to stop the ground cycling between frozen and thawed, not to keep garlic warm. When to spread it, how much, and what to do with it in April.