Lister implement?

What is a lister, as in lister planter maybe?

I think the Lister Co. made garden equipment years ago, perhaps other things.
I have a set of Hillers and a cultivater with their name on them.

A lister will plant at the bottom of a valley it creates while a regular planter just opens the soil enough to plant the seed (ground still more or less level). I think it depends on what your area expect for moisture and the type of soil. Talking with a farmer down here in Texas, they actual use a lister or hller to make hills and then plant on top of them to keep the corn from downing in wet years.

Not sure about other places, but around here a lister is used in late winter/early spring to make pre-plant rows to catch rain or to pre-plant irrigation. And back in the day when everybody used buster planters, listers had odd number of rows. For example, if you planted with 4 row, you listed with a 5 row. Plant with 6, list with 7 and so on, so that the planter busters were planting in the lister middles.
Ok...clear as mud I know!! lol Wish I had some pics to explain but I don't.

(quoted from post at 04:32:13 07/28/11) What is a lister, as in lister planter maybe?

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Do a Google search for 2 row lister. You will get lots of results, some with pictures.

Here in the (furrow) irrigated country,we use lister/hillers-we call them"marker shovels".We plant on top of the 'bed',and run the water in the"water mark".

Basically probably the best explanation would a plow bottom that throws dirt both ways.Theres lister plows, lister planters, to get a good idea look at one of the middle busters the farm supply stores sell.Thats basically a lister plow bottom,but a lister plow is much more effecient of course.Several ways you could use these pieces of equipment.ONE ,on a true lister planter,seeds wear planted in bottom (actually below bottom ) of furrow. This allowed later cultivation to throw soil up against growing plants leaving roots way down deep to conserve subsoil moisture.A TIP ,, DO NOT plant this way if you plan on cultivating with a standard row cultivator, you might as well beat your head against the wall.To do this( and it works very well) you need a special cultivator made for knocking down ridges between rows,we called them ridge busters, but they have various names,monitors,disc cultivators etc. NEVER EVER buy an old lister planter without buying the cultivator to match, a regular cultivator simply wont work untill you get the ridges knocked down level..second common lister is a lister plow,these worked like a regular plow except they left field in ridges, if you lived in a area with exccess moisture you could use one of these and plant on top of ridges,this would , since it dried soil keep seed from rotting, help drain exccess moisture awy from roots, keep problems with mold and things down, etc. worked very well also in areas where its suited.one such area would be the coastal areas where ground level is just a few feet above sea level and water tends not to run off as fast or just pool up. another place where you may here the term is there were actually lister openers for grain drills , did basiclly did the same as a lister planter but was used mostly for the cereal grains out on the plains.here moisture is a at a premium ,but wind erosion is a huge problem.a lister drill would leave your field in small ridges with seed planted at bottom to conserve moisture,but the ridges would help to stop wind from blowing your topsoil away when it was dry.ridges were not high enough to interfere with the running of a combine or binder and since these crops were not generally cultivated this caused no harvesting problems.
lister planters could often be adjusted to plant in tops or bottoms of rows also,but most folks when they had them setup for thier farm never adjusted them much.

Thanks for nice response to my question. The term came up at the local county fair in the old time antique tractor and implements display.

I was looking for something else but happened to run across this pic. In this region, when somebody says "lister", this is what they're speaking of. Maybe it will help clear up my earlier post.

You are correct and a "lister planter" is basically the same implement with planter unit attached to each bottom. They were used down here in Tx in my youth to make beds(rows) and then to plant seeds (corn/cotton or milo) on the top of the beds. Now all farmers flat plant IE no beds.

yes ,thats a picture of a lister plow.you will hear terms like double listing,back listing etc.what folks would commonly do in the dry areas where most of the moisture fell during the late fall, winter, and early spring with long hot dry summers,would be to plow with a lister plow in late fall throwing up soil in long ridges . rain and snow would stand in furrow bottoms and sink into subsoil over the winter.then they would come in in spring and use a lister planter to split out the ridges and plant their seeds.cultivation would level ground back throwing soil against growing plants and leave roots way down in ground where moisture was trapped and making the field smooth again for mechanical harvetors.. if a person listed during fall,and decided he wanted to sow or drill a crop in on the level,he would either use the plow again to level field before planting, or us a middlebuster to knock down ridges and pull maybe a harrow to level ground up for planting.you could single list and simply use the planter to break out and plant ground at the same time of course. same basic concept is used today on planters but most have gone to disc type openers of some sort because they dont have to be treated like a plow share ,rebuilt,sharpened and all. they can be replaced much faster and easier.basically listers were tools used to conserve moisture for the most part.and they allowed lots of crops to be grown in places where there was barely enough moisture otherwise.

ours was bought as a double bottom middle buster from Landsdowne Moody Ford in Houston back in the late 50's...we used it to make rows for the truck garden...now i know what yall are talking about when you say lister.

Here's a John Deere #6 2 Row Loose Ground Lister Planter. This one dates to about 1950, and came from western Kansas.




The ropes operate the lift mechanism, and the row markers.



It uses double discs to open a furrow, a runner opens up the bottom for seed placement. Double discs cover the seed, and a press wheel finishes the process. I've read that planting in the furrow also helped to hill up around the plantings when cultivated. HTH Mark

The pic is one that looks exactly like the one my grandpa Adolph Kasahut used. But we didnt call it a lister planter. It was just a planter, A Lister planter had furrow openers that looked exactly like a lister, and that is, they looked like a right and left moldboard and share put together. All the old farmers up there had walking listers. They all likely came with planter attachments onto them. They all, as at least to my knowledge were taken off when disc planters like the one in the picture came into vogue. The listers were then put to makeing tater rows, and listing them back up again . Ive seen a couple tractor 2 row lister planters, But they werent popular in NE Kans.

(quoted from post at 14:41:17 08/01/11) The pic is one that looks exactly like the one my grandpa Adolph Kasahut used. But we didnt call it a lister planter. It was just a planter, A Lister planter had furrow openers that looked exactly like a lister, and that is, they looked like a right and left moldboard and share put together.

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Here's the original owners manual. The unit can adjust to 6 furrow depths by placing the double disc furrowers on different locations on the seed boot. The depth the runner plants in the bottom of the furrow is adjusted by the yellow crank between the seed boxes, in the other posted pictures.