A transplanting apparatus which can plant virtually 100% of the seedlings from a nursery tray, while avoid skips when planting which may happen when seeds in a tray row fail to grow into seedlings. This is accomplished by picking up an entire row of seedlings from a tray, transferring the seedlings to a mechanism which eliminates gaps between seedlings, and then discharging the seedlings one at a time to the ground with a desired spacing between the seedlings while having 100% control of the seedlings. A root ball compressor is provided to provide better control of the seedlings as the compressed root balls are less likely to tip over, and the compressed root balls are easier to be grabbed by the pinch disks.
