Planting Citrus On The Fly

Tommy Todd Of Lykes Bros. Citrus

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During the Florida Citrus Show, participating on a grower panel, Bill Barber said that growers are going to have to change and adapt in order to survive in an industry challenged by disease and increasing costs. An excellent example of this is happening at Lykes Bros. Citrus, where Barber is vice president and general manager. They have modified a pine tree planter to plant citrus trees.
“It is amazing to watch the machine in operation,” says Tommy Todd, general manager of the Basinger grove for Lykes Bros. “We were looking for more economical ways to plant solid set areas of citrus. Bill threw out an idea about using a pine tree planter. We actually had a trial here with
UF/IFAS where they were trying to show us how to use a pine tree planter to plant jatropha plants. We figured if we could do it with jatropha we could try it with citrus.”

Tweaking For Citrus

The planter is a Whitfield brand manufactured in Georgia. It originally came fully automated with mechanical feeders that pick up and place seedlings. However, there are important differences in planting citrus versus pine trees. The first is pine tree seedlings are very small compared to citrus seedlings. Second, the planter was designed to operate in the Georgia clay as opposed to Florida’s sandy soils. The combination of these factors made fully automated planting impractical. So, the team at Lykes put their heads together and modified the machine to be operated by two people on the go. One person prepares the seedling by removing the liner and hands it off to the second person who places the tree in the ground for planting.
The planter runs about 1 mph behind a CAT Challenger that is pulling the machine. It plants remarkably fast when compared to the traditional planting method. But, what Lykes Bros. is most excited about is the savings it is realizing by planting this way.
“Once we got everything set up and adjusted and had the machine running well, we are planting about 3,000 trees per day,” says Todd. “We ran the numbers on this as well and determined that we were spending about $1.80 to $2.00 per tree to plant the old way. Using the pine tree planter, we calculate it is costing us about 50¢ to 75¢.”

High-Tech Solution

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While pine tree planters have been around for many years, newer technology is at the heart of making this approach to planting work. The Challenger tractor comes equipped with a Trimble RTK GPS autosteer system that ensures trees are planted straight and at the proper spacing.
Field operators map out the new block prior to planting and set parameters for rows and tree spacing. The GPS unit creates a grid on which the tractor will follow with sub-inch accuracy when planting. At every interval when a tree is to be planted, the unit beeps, alerting the planter to release the tree into the ground where it is then tamped in by two packer wheels.

Like most equipment adaptations, some tinkering had to be made to get the system running smoothly. Todd says the planting team at Lykes is getting more comfortable with the system and will look to improve efficiency even further. 

“We ran into some issues to get to where we are now,” he says. “These were not big-dollar problems. We just had to figure how to make the planter and GPS technology do what we needed it to, and we’ve made our own personal touches like adding storage on the unit and putting a tarp roof on it to keep the people operating the machine in the shade.”

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