About second-hand Lettuce planting machines

Planting machines for lettuce are generally used by vegetable growers who propagate lettuce seedlings. Lettuce can be grown in the soil as well as in water: a process called hydroponics. Our lettuce planters are, however, only suitable for planting lettuce in soil. Lettuce transplanters can be used to transplant lettuce seedlings supplied in soil blocks into the soil. The plants can then be grown in a greenhouse or in the open field. A good plant bed is of crucial importance to this, which can be achieved by finely milling the soil.

Young lettuce plants are propagated from seed in a greenhouse. This process starts by allowing a seed to germinate on a very compact little pot of soil, called a soil block or a soil plug. When the plant is a few weeks old, it is ready to be transplanted into the soil. This process is executed by a transplanter for soil blocks. The young plants can be propagated and the soil blocks made by the farmer growing the lettuce, but there are also nurseries that specialise in propagating lettuce seedlings on soil blocks.

How does a soil block transplanter for lettuce work?

A lettuce planting machine puts the soil blocks with lettuce seedlings into the soil by means of small conveyor belts. Every row is assigned its own conveyor belt. The way most planting machines for leafy vegetables work is that the workers feed the conveyor belts with the soil blocks on which the young plants are grown. These are supplied in shallow crates. Next, the conveyor belts shallowly plant the soil blocks in the soil. Some lettuce planting machine have a gripper that takes the soil blocks from the conveyor belt and puts them in the soil, while other transplanters simply drop the soil blocks onto to the ground. These conveyor belts are centrally driven by means of a driving roller that rolls across the ground. This roller ensures that the planting distance in the row is uniform and not dependent on the driving speed with which the lettuce is planted. The planting distance of the lettuce plants can be adjusted by exchanging gears.

An increasing number of manufacturers, such as Ferrari and Checchi & Magli, have a fully automatic lettuce transplanter in their product range. The way these transplanters work is that the soil blocks are automatically fed from the crates onto the conveyor belts. As a result, manual labour is no longer required for planting lettuce.

Do you use plastic mulch? We sometimes also have lettuce transplanters that are suitable for planting soil blocks in plastic mulch. However, machines like these are not often available second-hand.

Our used lettuce planting machines

Lettuce transplanters are available in the following models: attached to the three-point linkage of a tractor, pulled by a tractor or self-propelled. A lettuce transplanter can also be used to plant soil blocks with other leafy vegetables, such as iceberg lettuce, endives, celery or seed onions. We offer soil block transplanters from brands such as Ferrari, Van der Beucken, Basrijs, Regero and Bruno Compact.

Do you have any questions about lettuce transplanters? Our expert staff will be happy to assist and advise you in finding the most suitable soil block transplanter for your farm or nursery.