The Country
  • The Country home
  • Latest news
  • Audio & podcasts
  • Opinion
  • Dairy farming
  • Sheep & beef farming
  • Rural business
  • Rural technology
  • Rural life
  • Listen on iHeart radio

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • Coast & Country News
  • Opinion
  • Dairy farming
  • Sheep & beef farming
  • Horticulture
  • Animal health
  • Rural business
  • Rural technology
  • Rural life

Media

  • Podcasts
  • Video

Weather

  • Kaitaia
  • Whāngarei
  • Dargaville
  • Auckland
  • Thames
  • Tauranga
  • Hamilton
  • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Tokoroa
  • Te Kuiti
  • Taumurunui
  • Taupō
  • Gisborne
  • New Plymouth
  • Napier
  • Hastings
  • Dannevirke
  • Whanganui
  • Palmerston North
  • Levin
  • Paraparaumu
  • Masterton
  • Wellington
  • Motueka
  • Nelson
  • Blenheim
  • Westport
  • Reefton
  • Kaikōura
  • Greymouth
  • Hokitika
  • Christchurch
  • Ashburton
  • Timaru
  • Wānaka
  • Oamaru
  • Queenstown
  • Dunedin
  • Gore
  • Invercargill

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Premium
Home / The Country

Our Treasures: Fitting tribute to hand cultivator pioneer Planet Junior in Whangārei Museum

Georgia Kerby
By Georgia Kerby
Northern Advocate columnist·Northern Advocate·
30 Jul, 2019 02:00 AM4 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

The best preserved hand tool in the collection, a single wheeled cultivator donated by D. Murray featuring full wooden handles. Photo / Supplied

The best preserved hand tool in the collection, a single wheeled cultivator donated by D. Murray featuring full wooden handles. Photo / Supplied

OUR TREASURES

Horticultural technology has developed slowly over the length of human history. Simple ploughs, spades, and sickles used over 1000 years ago maintain their usefulness today.

It is only the rise of mass scale monoculture cropping in the past 100 years which has transformed garden equipment into the large machines now unrecognisable by our ancestors.

Examples of internationally popular garden tools on a smaller scale are three hand pushed cultivators from circa 1900 in Whangārei Museum (catalogue numbers 1994.86.26, 1982.10.1, and 1991.42.1).

Made of cast iron with wooden handles, these cultivators were all made by American manufacturer Planet Junior. Each had the innovative benefit of spare attachments which could transform the tool into a hoe, plough, rake, drill, leaf lifter, and seeder for all stages of growing a garden.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The first has two wheels with two hoe sweeps attached. The depth of these was adjustable, and they were used for weeding, preparing the soil surface, or creating furrows (rows) as it was pushed by hand.

One of the tools with two wheels and two hoe sweeps attached, used for weeding, preparing the soil surface, or creating furrows (rows) as it was pushed by hand. Photo / Supplied
One of the tools with two wheels and two hoe sweeps attached, used for weeding, preparing the soil surface, or creating furrows (rows) as it was pushed by hand. Photo / Supplied

Only one partial wooden handle has survived, but it helps to give the impression of the direction and angle the hoe was worked in. The cast iron archway is embossed with "Planet Junior" and lower "Philadelphia, U. S. A".

The second cultivator, donated to Whangārei Museum by R. Morris in the 1980s, is a single wheeled cultivator with two hoe sweeps attached. These have been bolted on facing the other way from our first example, instead serving to sweep soil back over a planted row.

A simple adjustment for two separate tasks. Iron letters arching over the tool's body spell "Firefly", the name of this special Planet Junior model.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Our third example is the best preserved, as a single wheeled cultivator donated by D. Murray featuring full wooden handles. This Model 146 has three cultivator teeth attached for digging deep or marking out rows.

As the founder of Planet Junior, Samuel Leeds Allen was clearly a born businessman, innovator, and a gentleman.

Discover more

Whangārei 'Garden of Auckland' in the mid-late 1800s

02 Jul 11:10 PM

Contest to find 'Fastest Milker in the Shire'

01 Aug 02:00 AM

Dobbie's Orchard in 'Growing Local' display

13 Aug 01:30 AM
Dreer's garden book 73rd annual edition 1911. Photo / Supplied
Dreer's garden book 73rd annual edition 1911. Photo / Supplied

Discovered after his death were handwritten precepts for refining, among other things, punctuality, depth of thought, systematic behaviour, and politeness.

Allen's striving for improvement in himself was matched in his business. In the late 1860s, early garden machines were still relatively crude and many farmers instead planted and weeded by hand.

Allen dedicated to solving this problem by inventing simple but effective garden tools. In 1866 he developed a fertiliser drill from washtubs and a wooden tyre, naming it "Planet Saturn" noting the wheel's affinity to the planet's rings.

His later innovation of a smaller seed drill was subsequently named "Planet Junior", and thus was the beginning of an iconic business.

Branding on one of the hand tools. Photo / Supplied
Branding on one of the hand tools. Photo / Supplied

Planet Junior developed and manufactured new farm and garden tools over the next 30 years, expanding to a large factory in Philadelphia. The focus was on products of best quality and improved design.

His target market was the small farmer or, more specifically, "pluggers", defined as small farmers who took farming and the family home as the highest priorities and prospered through hard work (John R. Stilgoe, Scientific Authority & Twentieth Century America).

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Planet Junior began making their best-selling seed sowers in 1871 and their ability to quickly, smoothly, and accurately sow rows of seeds made them widely loved by home gardeners, market gardeners, and nursery workers alike.

With more efficient and interchangeable tools, gardeners could spend less money and time on their gardens but with the same or improved output of produce.

A 1922 company catalogue states other benefits as: "A little sunburn and sore hands are the first effects of this garden cultivating, but this is soon succeeded by a sense of pride in achievement, and a toning up of the whole physical system through exercise".

The 1880 Planet Jr Farm and Garden Tools book. Photo / Supplied
The 1880 Planet Jr Farm and Garden Tools book. Photo / Supplied

With hundreds of patents to his name Allen died in 1918, but his company continued to expand until the farming industry changed in scale and the company closed in 1968.

The three cultivators in Whangarei Museum remain characteristic of a pioneering and colourful company, still revered by collectors today.

• Georgia Kerby is exhibitions curator , Whangārei Museum at Kiwi North.

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from The Country

The Country

'We love you Jocko': Hundreds pay tribute to Stewart Island hunting accident victim

The Country

City to Farm - how leftovers are giving back to the land

The Country

The Country: Tasman farmer on flooding aftermath


Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from The Country

'We love you Jocko': Hundreds pay tribute to Stewart Island hunting accident victim
The Country

'We love you Jocko': Hundreds pay tribute to Stewart Island hunting accident victim

Jock Davies was remembered for his infectious humour, caring nature and great strength.

14 Jul 04:21 AM
City to Farm - how leftovers are giving back to the land
The Country

City to Farm - how leftovers are giving back to the land

14 Jul 03:16 AM
The Country: Tasman farmer on flooding aftermath
The Country

The Country: Tasman farmer on flooding aftermath

14 Jul 02:16 AM


Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

06 Jul 09:47 PM
NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP