Misplaced Pages

#573426

91-724: Harrows differ from ploughs , which cut the upper 12 to 25 centimetre (5 to 10 in) layer of soil, and leave furrows , parallel trenches. Harrows differ from cultivators in that they disturb the whole surface of the soil, while a cultivator instead disturbs only narrow tracks between the crop rows to kill weeds. There are four general types of harrows: disc harrows , tine harrows (including spring-tooth harrows , drag harrows , and spike harrows), chain harrows, and chain-disk harrows. Harrows were originally drawn by draft animals , such as horses, mules, or oxen, or in some times and places by manual labourers . In modern practice they are almost always tractor -mounted implements, either trailed after

182-461: A PIE stem * blōkó- , which supposedly gave Old Armenian peɫem "to dig" and Welsh bwlch "crack", though the word may not be of Indo-European origin. The basic parts of the modern plough are: Other parts include the frog (or frame), runner, landside, shin, trashboard, and stilts (handles). On modern ploughs and some older ploughs, the mould board is separate from the share and runner, so these parts can be replaced without replacing

273-530: A two-wheel tractor or four-wheel tractor . For two-wheel tractors, they are usually rigidly fixed and powered via couplings to the tractors' transmission. For four-wheel tractors they are usually attached by means of a three-point hitch and driven by a power take-off . Drawbar hookup is also still commonly used worldwide. Draft-animal power is sometimes still used today, being somewhat common in developing nations although rare in more industrialized economies. The basic idea of soil scratching for weed control

364-573: A broken piece to be replaced. In 1833 John Lane invented a steel plough. Then in 1837 John Deere introduced a steel plough; it was so much stronger than iron designs that it could work soil in US areas previously thought unsuitable for farming. Improvements on this followed developments in metallurgy: steel coulters and shares with softer iron mould boards to prevent breakage, the chilled plough (an early example of surface-hardened steel), and eventually mould boards with faces strong enough to dispense with

455-501: A class of machines referred to as motor cultivators , which were simply modified horse-drawn shank-type cultivators with motors added for self-propulsion. This class of machines found limited market success. But by 1921 International Harvester had combined motorized cultivating with the other tasks of tractors (tractive power and belt work) to create the Farmall , the general-purpose tractor tailored to cultivating that basically invented

546-491: A clumsy construction necessitated large plough-teams, and this meant that large areas of land had to be reserved as pasture. In China, where much less animal power was required, it was not necessary to maintain the mixed arable-pasture economy typical of Europe: fallows could be reduced and the arable area expanded, and a considerably larger population could be supported than on the same amount of land in Europe. The upper parts of

637-683: A design with 5 rotary hoe cultivator blades and an internal combustion engine in 1920. In March 1922, Howard formed the company Austral Auto Cultivators Pty Ltd, which later became known as Howard Auto Cultivators. It was based in Northmead , a suburb of Sydney , from 1927. Meanwhile, in North America during the 1910s, tractors were evolving away from traction engine –sized monsters toward smaller, lighter, more affordable machines. The Fordson tractor especially had made tractors affordable and practical for small and medium family farms for

728-443: A field leaves a row of sods partly in the furrows and partly on the ground lifted earlier. Visually, across the rows, there is the land on the left, a furrow (half the width of the removed strip of soil) and the removed strip almost upside-down lying on about half of the previous strip of inverted soil, and so on across the field. Each layer of soil and the gutter it came from forms a classic furrow. The mould-board plough greatly reduced

819-431: A hydraulic cylinder on each bottom. When an obstruction is encountered, the plough bottom hinges back and up in such a way as to pass over the obstruction, without stopping the tractor and plough. The bottom automatically returns to normal ploughing position as soon as the obstruction is passed, without any interruption of forward motion. The automatic reset design permits higher field efficiencies since stopping for stones

910-539: A marked population increase, beginning around AD 1000. Before the Han dynasty (202 BC – AD 220), Chinese ploughs were made almost wholly of wood except for the iron blade of the ploughshare. These were V-shaped iron pieces mounted on wooden blades and handles. By the Han period the entire ploughshare was made of cast iron . These are the earliest known heavy, mould-board iron ploughs. Several advancements such as

1001-692: A millennium. Major changes in design spread widely in the Age of Enlightenment , when there was rapid progress in design. Joseph Foljambe in Rotherham , England, in 1730, used new shapes based on the Rotherham plough, which covered the mould board with iron. Unlike the heavy plough, the Rotherham, or Rotherham swing plough consisted entirely of the coulter, mould board and handles. It was much lighter than earlier designs and became common in England. It may have been

SECTION 10

#1732773344574

1092-404: A mouldboard plough: The share , landside and mould board are bolted to the frog, which is an irregular piece of cast iron at the base of the plough body, to which the soil-wearing parts are bolted. The share is the edge that makes the horizontal cut to separate the furrow slice from the soil below. Conventional shares are shaped to penetrate soil efficiently: the tip is pointed downward to pull

1183-408: A mounted point is somewhere between the last two types. Makers have designed shares of various shapes (trapesium, diamond, etc.) with bolted point and wings, often separately renewable. Sometimes the share-cutting edge is placed well in advance of the mould board to reduce the pulverizing action of the soil. The mould board is the part of the plough that receives the furrow slice from the share. It

1274-416: A plough body hits an obstruction are a cheaper overload protection device. Trip-beam ploughs are constructed with a hinge point in the beam. This is usually located some distance above the top of the plough bottom. The bottom is held in normal ploughing position by a spring-operated latch. When an obstruction is encountered, the entire bottom is released and hinges back and up to pass over the obstruction. It

1365-438: A ploughman could easily lift. This limited the construction to a small amount of wood (although metal edges were possible). These ploughs were fairly fragile and unsuitable for the heavier soils of northern Europe. The introduction of wheels to replace the runner allowed the weight of the plough to increase, and in turn the use of a larger mould-board faced in metal. These heavy ploughs led to greater food production and eventually

1456-528: A power source, he found that ground could be mechanically tilled without soil-packing occurring, as was the case with normal ploughing . His earliest designs threw the tilled soil sideways, until he improved his invention by designing an L-shaped blade mounted on widely spaced flanges fixed to a small-diameter rotor. With fellow apprentice Everard McCleary, he established a company to make his machine, but plans were interrupted by World War I . In 1919 Howard returned to Australia and resumed his design work, patenting

1547-440: A proliferation of cultivator designs proceeded. These new cultivators were drawn by draft animals (such as horses, mules, or oxen) or were pushed or drawn by people, depending on the need and expense. The powered rotary hoe was invented by Arthur Clifford Howard who, in 1912, began experimenting with rotary tillage on his father's farm at Gilgandra, New South Wales , Australia . Initially using his father's steam tractor engine as

1638-454: A rigid towing-bar at the front of the set. In the southern hemisphere, so-called giant discs are a specialised kind of disc harrows that can stand in for a plough in rough country where a mouldboard plough cannot handle tree-stumps and rocks, and a disc-plough is too slow (because of its limited number of discs). Giant scalloped-edged discs operate in a set, or frame, that is often weighted with concrete or steel blocks to improve penetration of

1729-406: A tractor with an excess of 150 horsepower (110 kW) (PTO) to drive them. Field cultivators are used to complete tillage operations in many types of arable crop fields. The main function of the field cultivator is to prepare a proper seedbed for the crop to be planted into, to bury crop residue in the soil (helping to warm the soil before planting), to control weeds, and to mix and incorporate

1820-463: A type of cultivator. They are popular with home gardeners who want large vegetable gardens. The garden may be tilled a few times before planting each crop. Rotary tillers may be rented from tool rental centers for single-use applications, such as when planting grass. A small rotary hoe for domestic gardens was known by the trademark Rototiller and another, made by the Howard Group, who produced

1911-436: A variety of tilling processes. Where harrowing provides a very fine tilth, or the soil is very light so that it might easily be wind-blown, a roller is often added as the last of the set. Harrows may be of several types and weights, depending on their purpose. They almost always consist of a rigid frame that holds discs, teeth, linked chains, or other means of moving soil—but tine and chain harrows are often only supported by

SECTION 20

#1732773344574

2002-492: Is ancient and was done with hoes or plough for millennia before any larger or more complex equipment was developed to reduce the manual labor and to speed the work. The notion of ganging several hoes together and applying draft animal power to drag them led to harrows , which while newer than the hoe are still quite ancient. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the Industrial Revolution developed,

2093-408: Is necessary to back up the tractor and plough to reset the bottom. This construction is used to protect the individual bottoms. The automatic reset design has only recently been introduced on US ploughs, but has been used extensively on European and Australian ploughs. Here the beam is hinged at a point almost above the point of the share. The bottom is held in the normal position by a set of springs or

2184-854: Is not attested in Gothic ) and is thought to be a loan from one of the north Italic languages . The German cognate is "pflug", the Dutch "ploeg" and the Swedish "plog". In many Slavic languages and in Romanian the word is "plug". Words with the same root appeared with related meanings: in Raetic plaumorati "wheeled heavy plough" ( Pliny , Nat. Hist. 18, 172), and in Latin plaustrum "farm cart", plōstrum, plōstellum "cart", and plōxenum, plōximum "cart box". The word must have originally referred to

2275-577: Is not practical on larger ploughs. When an obstruction is encountered, the spring release mechanism in the hitch permits the plough to uncouple from the tractor. When a hydraulic lift is used on the plough, the hydraulic hoses will also usually uncouple automatically when the plough uncouples. Most plough makers offer an automatic reset system for tough conditions or rocky soils. The re-set mechanism allows each body to move rearward and upward to pass without damage over obstacles such as rocks hidden below soil surface. A heavy leaf or coil-spring mechanism that holds

2366-454: Is often used to level off the ground after heavy use, to remove and smooth out boot marks and indentations. Used on tilled land in combination with the other two types, chain harrowing rolls remaining larger soil clumps to the surface where weather breaks them down and prevents interference with seed germination. All four harrow types can be used in one pass to prepare soil for seeding. It is also common to use any combination of two harrows for

2457-457: Is practically eliminated. It also reduces costs for broken shares, beams and other parts. The fast resetting action helps produce a better job of ploughing, as large areas of unploughed land are not left, as they are when lifting a plough over a stone. Manual loy ploughing was a form used on small farms in Ireland where farmers could not afford more, or on hilly ground that precluded horses. It

2548-523: Is presumably why the standard Han plough team consisted of two animals only, and later teams usually of a single animal, rather than the four, six or eight draught animals common in Europe before the introduction of the curved mould-board and other new principles of design in the 18th century. Though the mould-board plough first appeared in Europe in early medieval, if not in late Roman, times, pre-eighteenth century mould-boards were usually wooden and straight (Fig. 59). The enormous labour involved in pulling such

2639-427: Is responsible for lifting and turning the furrow slice and sometimes for shattering it, depending on the type of mould board, ploughing depth and soil conditions. The intensity of this depends on the type of mould board. To suit different soil conditions and crop requirements, mould boards have been designed in different shapes, each producing its own furrow profile and surface finish, but essentially they still conform to

2730-459: Is shallower ploughing or other less-invasive conservation tillage . The plough appears in one of the oldest surviving pieces of written literature, from the 3rd millennium BC, where it is personified and debating with another tool, the hoe , over which is better: a Sumerian disputation poem known as the Debate between the hoe and the plough . In older English, as in other Germanic languages ,

2821-710: Is still widely used, and probably will continue to be indispensable to affordable food production worldwide for the foreseeable future; but its wise management includes seeking alternate methods, such as the traditional standby of mechanical cultivation, where practical. To the extent that cultivating is done commercially today (such as in truck farming ), it is usually powered by tractors , especially row-crop tractors. Industrial cultivators can vary greatly in size and shape, from 10 feet (3 m) to 80 feet (24 m) wide. Many are equipped with hydraulic wings that fold up to make road travel easier and safer. Different types are used for preparation of fields before planting, and for

Harrow (tool) - Misplaced Pages Continue

2912-430: Is the origin of the acre . The one-sided action gradually moved soil from the sides to the centre line of the strip. If the strip was in the same place each year, the soil built up into a ridge, creating the ridge and furrow topography still seen in some ancient fields. The turn-wrest plough allows ploughing to be done to either side. The mould board is removable, turning to the right for one furrow, then being moved to

3003-667: Is useful in preventing dormant weed seeds from being brought to the surface, and there is no horizontal slicing of the subsurface soil that can lead to hardpan formation. ЫюсЫ In Europe , harrows were used in antiquity and the Middle Ages . The oldest known illustration of a harrow is in Scene 10 of the eleventh-century Bayeux Tapestry . An Arabic reference to harrows is to be found in Abu Bakr Ibn Wahshiyya 's Nabatean Agriculture (Kitab al-Filaha al-Nabatiyya), of

3094-402: Is very short, except at the rear bottom of the plough. The heel or rear end of the rear land side may be subject to excessive wear if the rear wheel is out of adjustment, and so a chilled iron heel piece is frequently used. This is inexpensive and can be easily replaced. The land side is fastened to the frog by plough bolts. The frog (standard) is the central part of the plough bottom to which

3185-637: Is why they are called hand-ards . However, domestication of oxen in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilisation , perhaps as early as the 6th millennium BC, provided mankind with the draft power needed to develop the larger, animal-drawn true ard (or scratch plough). The earliest surviving evidence of ploughing has been dated to 3500–3800 BCE, on a site in Bubeneč , Czech Republic. A ploughed field, from c.  2800 BCE,

3276-460: The Industrial Revolution came the possibility of steam engines to pull ploughs. These in turn were superseded by internal-combustion -powered tractors in the early 20th century. The Petty Plough was a notable invention for ploughing out orchard strips in Australia in the 1930s. Use of the traditional plough has decreased in some areas threatened by soil damage and erosion . Used instead

3367-409: The carruca heavy plough in Europe seems to have accompanied adoption of the three-field system in the later 8th and early 9th centuries, leading to improved agricultural productivity per unit of land in northern Europe. This was accompanied by larger fields, known variously as carucates , ploughlands, and plough gates. The basic plough with coulter, ploughshare and mould board remained in use for

3458-448: The sod . In addition, there are various types of power harrow , in which the cultivators are power-driven from the tractor rather than depending on its forward motion. Tine harrows are used to refine seed-bed condition before planting, to remove small weeds in growing crops and to loosen the inter-row soils to allow for water to soak into the subsoil . The fourth is a chain disk harrow. Disk attached to chains are pulled at an angle over

3549-489: The topsoil close to the crop plants kills the surrounding weeds by uprooting them, burying their leaves to disrupt their photosynthesis or a combination of both). Unlike a harrow , which disturbs the entire surface of the soil, cultivators are designed to disturb the soil in careful patterns, sparing the crop plants but disrupting the weeds. Cultivators of the toothed type are often similar in form to chisel plows , but their goals are different. Cultivators' teeth work near

3640-421: The 10th century, but claiming knowledge from Babylonian sources. Ploughs A plough or ( US ) plow (both pronounced / p l aʊ / ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses but modern ploughs are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or steel frame with a blade attached to cut and loosen

3731-452: The body in its working position under normal conditions resets the plough after the obstruction is passed. Another type of auto-reset mechanism uses an oil (hydraulic) and gas accumulator. Shock loads cause the oil to compress the gas. When the gas expands again, the leg returns to its working ploughing position after passing over the obstacle. The simplest mechanism is a breaking (shear) bolt that needs replacement. Shear bolts that break when

Harrow (tool) - Misplaced Pages Continue

3822-569: The bottom of the shaft with bits of rope, which made them more fragile than the Chinese ones, and iron mould-boards did not appear in Europe until the 10th century. The first indisputable appearance after the Roman period is in a northern Italian document of 643. Old words connected with the heavy plough and its use appear in Slavic , suggesting possible early use in that region. General adoption of

3913-716: The category of row-crop tractors . In Australia, by the 1930s, Howard was finding it increasingly difficult to meet a growing worldwide demand for exports of his machines. He travelled to the United Kingdom , founding the company Rotary Hoes Ltd in East Horndon , Essex, in July 1938. Branches of this new company subsequently opened in the United States of America, South Africa, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. It later became

4004-522: The center blades deal with the center of the row, and can be anywhere from 1 to 36 rows wide. Small tilling equipment, used in small gardens such as household gardens and small commercial gardens, can provide both primary and secondary tillage. For example, a rotary tiller does both the "plowing" and the "harrowing", preparing a smooth, loose seedbed. It does not provide the row-wise weed control that cultivator teeth would. For that task, there are single-person-pushable toothed cultivators. Rotary tillers are

4095-508: The control of weeds between row crops. The cultivator may be an implement trailed after the tractor via a drawbar ; mounted on the three-point hitch ; or mounted on a frame beneath the tractor. Active cultivator implements are driven by a power take-off shaft. While most cultivator are considered a secondary tillage implement, active cultivators are commonly used for primary tillage in lighter soils instead of plowing. The largest versions available are about 6 m (20 ft) wide, and require

4186-446: The coulter. By the time of the early 1900s, the steel plough had many uses, shapes and names. The "two horse breaking plough" had a point and wing used to break the soil's surface and turn the dirt out and over. The "shovel plough" was used to lay off the rows. The "harrow plough" was used to cover the planted seed. The "scratcher" or "geewhiz" was used to deweed or cultivate the crop. The "bulltongue" and "sweeps" were used to plough

4277-470: The cut formed by the coulter, turning over the soil to the side. The ploughshare spread the cut horizontally below the surface, so that when the mould board lifted it, a wider area of soil was turned over. Mould boards are known in Britain from the late 6th century onwards. There are multiple types of ploughs available. When a plough hits a rock or other solid obstruction, serious damage may result unless

4368-433: The cutting edges. This sort of cultivation is usually followed by broadcast fertilisation and seeding, rather than drilled or row seeding. A drag is a heavy harrow. A rotary power harrow, or simply power harrow, has multiple sets of vertical tines. Each set of tines is rotated on a vertical axis and tills the soil horizontally. The result is that, unlike a rotary tiller , soil layers are not turned over or inverted, which

4459-465: The design. Using mathematical methods, he eventually arrived at a shape cast from a single piece of iron, an improvement on the Scots plough of James Anderson of Hermiston . A single-piece cast-iron plough was also developed and patented by Charles Newbold in the United States. This was again improved on by Jethro Wood , a blacksmith of Scipio, New York , who made a three-part Scots plough that allowed

4550-501: The disk hitched to the tractor, and the spring-tooth hitched to, and directly behind, the disk. The result is a smooth field with powdery dirt at the surface. In cooler climates the most common types are the disc harrow , the chain harrow , the tine harrow or spike harrow and the spring tine harrow . Chain harrows are often used for lighter work such as levelling the tilth or covering seed, while disc harrows are typically used for heavy work, such as following ploughing to break up

4641-475: The fields were often cross-ploughed lengthwise and breadth-wise, which tended to form squarish Celtic fields . The ard is best suited to loamy or sandy soils that are naturally fertilised by annual flooding, as in the Nile Delta and Fertile Crescent , and to a lesser extent any other cereal -growing region with light or thin soil. To grow crops regularly in less-fertile areas, it was once believed that

SECTION 50

#1732773344574

4732-567: The first plough widely built in factories and commercially successful there. In 1789 Robert Ransome , an iron founder in Ipswich , started casting ploughshares in a disused malting at St Margaret's Ditches. A broken mould in his foundry caused molten metal to come into contact with cold metal, making the metal surface extremely hard. This process, chilled casting, resulted in what Ransome advertised as "self-sharpening" ploughs. He received patents for his discovery. James Small further advanced

4823-454: The first time in history. Cultivating was somewhat of an afterthought in the Fordson's design, which reflected the fact that even just bringing practical motorized tractive power alone to this market segment was in itself a milestone. This left an opportunity for others to pursue better motorized cultivating. Between 1915 and 1920, various inventors and farm implement companies experimented with

4914-412: The frame carry (from the front) the coupling for the motive power (horses), the coulter, and the landside frame. Depending on the size of the implement, and the number of furrows it is designed to plough at one time, a fore-carriage with a wheel or wheels (known as a furrow wheel and support wheel) may be added to support the frame (wheeled plough). In the case of a single-furrow plough there is one wheel at

5005-617: The frame supporting the under-share (below-ground component). The heavy iron moldboard plow was invented in China 's Han Empire in the 1st and 2nd century, and from there it spread to the Netherlands , which led the Agricultural Revolution. The mould-board plough introduced in the 18th century was a major advance in technology. Chinese ploughs from Han times on fulfill all these conditions of efficiency nicely, which

5096-419: The front and handles at the rear for the ploughman to maneuver it. When dragged through a field, the coulter cuts down into the soil and the share cuts horizontally from the previous furrow to the vertical cut. This releases a rectangular strip of sod to be lifted by the share and carried by the mould board up and over, so that the strip of sod (slice of the topsoil ) that is being cut lifts and rolls over as

5187-464: The great advantage of leaving a level surface that facilitates seedbed preparation and harvesting. Very little marking out is necessary before ploughing can start; idle running on the headland is minimal compared with conventional ploughs. Cultivator A cultivator (also known as a rotavator ) is a piece of agricultural equipment used for secondary tillage . One sense of the name refers to frames with teeth (also called shanks ) that pierce

5278-414: The ground. These harrows move rapidly across the surface. The chain and disk rotate to stay clean while breaking up the top surface to about 1 inch (3 cm) deep. A smooth seedbed is prepared for planting with one pass. Chain harrowing can be used on pasture land to spread out dung, and to break up dead material ( thatch ) in the sward, and similarly in sports-ground maintenance a light chain harrowing

5369-622: The holding company for Howard Rotavator Co. Ltd. The Howard Group of companies was acquired by the Danish Thrige Agro Group in 1985, and in December 2000 the Howard Group became a member of Kongskilde Industries of Soroe , Denmark . In modern commercial agriculture, the amount of cultivating done for weed control has been greatly reduced via use of herbicides instead. However, herbicides are not always desirable—for example, in organic farming . When herbicidal weed control

5460-470: The long sides and being dragged across the short sides without ploughing. The length of the strip was limited by the distance oxen (later horses) could comfortably work without rest, and their width by the distance the plough could conveniently be dragged. These distances determined the traditional size of the strips: a furlong , (or "furrow's length", 220 yards (200 m)) by a chain (22 yards (20 m)) – an area of one acre (about 0.4 hectares); this

5551-440: The middle of the rows. All these metal plough points required being re-sharpened about every ten days, due to their use on rough and rocky ground. The first mould-board ploughs could only turn the soil over in one direction ( conventionally to the right), as dictated by the shape of the mould board; therefore, a field had to be ploughed in long strips, or lands . The plough was usually worked clockwise around each land, ploughing

SECTION 60

#1732773344574

5642-575: The mould board. Abrasion eventually wears out all parts of a plough that come into contact with the soil. When agriculture was first developed , soil was turned using simple hand-held digging sticks and hoes . These were used in highly fertile areas, such as the banks of the Nile , where the annual flood rejuvenates the soil, to create drills (furrows) in which to plant seeds. Digging sticks, hoes and mattocks were not invented in any one place, and hoe cultivation must have been common everywhere agriculture

5733-403: The original plough body classification. The various types have been traditionally classified as general purpose, digger, and semi-digger, as described below. The land side is the flat plate which presses against and transmits the lateral thrust of the plough bottom to the furrow wall. It helps to resist the side pressure exerted by the furrow slice on the mould board. It also helps to stabilise

5824-410: The other components of the bottom are attached. It is an irregular piece of metal, which may be made of cast iron for cast iron ploughs or welded steel for steel ploughs. The frog is the foundation of the plough bottom. It takes the shock resulting from hitting rocks, and therefore should be tough and strong. The frog is in turn fastened to the plough frame. A runner extending from behind the share to

5915-536: The other is borne upside-down in the air. At the end of each row the paired ploughs are turned over so that the other can be used along the next furrow, again working the field in a consistent direction. These ploughs date back to the days of the steam engine and the horse. In almost universal use on farms, they have right and left-handed mould boards, enabling them to work up and down the same furrow. Reversible ploughs may either be mounted or semi-mounted and are heavier and more expensive than right-handed models, but have

6006-404: The other side of the plough to turn to the left. (The coulter and ploughshare are fixed.) Thus adjacent furrows can be ploughed in opposite directions, allowing ploughing to proceed continuously along the field and so avoid the ridge–furrow topography. The reversible (or roll-over) plough has two mould-board ploughs mounted back to back, one turning right, the other left. While one works the land,

6097-478: The plough are called furrows. In modern use, a ploughed field is normally left to dry and then harrowed before planting. Ploughing and cultivating soil evens the content of the upper 12 to 25 centimetres (5 to 10 in) layer of soil, where most plant feeder roots grow. Ploughs were initially powered by humans, but the use of farm animals is considerably more efficient. The earliest animals worked were oxen. Later, horses and mules were used in many areas. With

6188-455: The plough is equipped with some safety device. The damage may be bent or broken shares, bent standards, beams or braces. The three basic types of safety devices used on mould-board ploughs are a spring release device in the plough drawbar, a trip beam construction on each bottom, and an automatic reset design on each bottom. The spring release was used in the past almost universally on trailing-type ploughs with one to three or four bottoms. It

6279-410: The plough moves forward, dropping back upside down into the furrow and onto the turned soil from the previous run down the field. Each gap in the ground where the soil has been lifted and moved across (usually to the right) is called a furrow. The sod lifted from it rests at an angle of about 45 degrees in the adjacent furrow, up the back of the sod from the previous run. A series of ploughings run down

6370-487: The plough to create the desired width of furrow. The share is a plane part with a trapezoidal shape. It cuts the soil horizontally and lifts it. Common types are regular, winged-plane, bar-point, and share with mounted or welded point. The regular share conserves a good cut but is recommended on stone-free soils. The winged-plane share is used on heavy soil with a moderate amount of stones. The bar-point share can be used in extreme conditions (hard and stony soils). The share with

6461-472: The plough was traditionally known by other names, e.g. Old English sulh (modern dialectal sullow ), Old High German medela , geiza , huohilī(n) , Old Norse arðr ( Swedish årder ), and Gothic hōha , all presumably referring to the ard (scratch plough). The modern word comes from the Old Norse plógr , and is therefore Germanic, but it appears relatively late (it

6552-427: The plough while in operation. The rear bottom end of the landslide, which rubs against the furrow sole, is known as the heel. A heel iron is bolted to the end of the rear of the land side and helps to support the back of the plough. The land side and share are arranged to give a "lead" towards the unploughed land, so helping to sustain the correct furrow width. The land side is usually made of solid medium-carbon steel and

6643-406: The rear of the plough controls the direction of the plough, because it is held against the bottom land-side corner of the new furrow being formed. The holding force is the weight of the sod, as it is raised and rotated, on the curved surface of the mould board. Because of this runner, the mould board plough is harder to turn around than the scratch plough, and its introduction brought about a change in

6734-408: The row crop cultivator is weed control between the rows of an established crop. Row crop cultivators are usually raised and lowered by a three-point hitch and the depth is controlled by gauge wheels. Sometimes referred to as sweep cultivators , these commonly have two center blades that cut weeds from the roots near the base of the crop and turn over soil, while two rear sweeps further outward than

6825-617: The shape of fields – from mostly square fields into longer rectangular "strips" (hence the introduction of the furlong ). An advance on the basic design was the iron ploughshare, a replaceable horizontal cutting surface mounted on the tip of the share. The earliest ploughs with a detachable and replaceable share date from around 1000 BC in the Ancient Near East , and the earliest iron ploughshares from about 500 BC in China. Early mould boards were wedges that sat inside

6916-442: The share into the ground to a regular depth. The clearance, usually referred to as suction or down suction, varies with different makes and types of plough. Share configuration is related to soil type, particularly in the down suction or concavity of its lower surface. Generally three degrees of clearance or down suction are recognised: regular for light soil, deep for ordinary dry soil, and double-deep for clay and gravelly soils. As

7007-457: The share wears away, it becomes blunt and the plough will require more power to pull it through the soil. A plough body with a worn share will not have enough "suck" to ensure it delves the ground to its full working depth. In addition, the share has horizontal suction related to the amount its point is bent out of line with the land side. Down suction causes the plough to penetrate to proper depth when pulled forward, while horizontal suction causes

7098-413: The soil as they are dragged through it linearly . Another sense of the name also refers to machines that use the rotary motion of disks or teeth to accomplish a similar result, such as a rotary tiller . Cultivators stir and pulverize the soil, either before planting (to aerate the soil and prepare a smooth, loose seedbed ) or after the crop has begun growing (to kill weeds —controlled disturbance of

7189-411: The soil must be turned to bring nutrients to the surface. A major advance for this type of farming was the turn plough, also known as the mould-board plough (UK), moldboard plow (U.S.), or frame-plough. A coulter (or skeith) could be added to cut vertically into the ground just ahead of the share (in front of the frog), a wedge-shaped cutting edge at the bottom front of the mould board with the landside of

7280-438: The soil to ensure the growing crop has enough water and nutrients to grow well during the growing season. The implement has many shanks mounted on the underside of a metal frame, and small narrow rods at the rear of the machine that smooth out the soil surface for easier travel later when planting. In most field cultivators, one-to-many hydraulic cylinders raise and lower the implement and control its depth. The main function of

7371-461: The soil. It has been fundamental to farming for most of history. The earliest ploughs had no wheels; such a plough was known to the Romans as an aratrum . Celtic peoples first came to use wheeled ploughs in the Roman era. The prime purpose of ploughing is to turn over the uppermost soil, bringing fresh nutrients to the surface while burying weeds and crop remains to decay . Trenches cut by

7462-409: The stilt (handle) and the other a share (cutting blade) dragged through the topsoil to cut a shallow furrow suitable for most cereal crops. The ard does not clear new land well, so hoes or mattocks had to be used to pull up grass and undergrowth, and a hand-held, coulter -like ristle could be made to cut deeper furrows ahead of the share. Because the ard left a strip of undisturbed earth between furrows,

7553-521: The surface, usually for weed control , whereas chisel plow shanks work deep beneath the surface, breaking up the hardened layer on top. Small toothed cultivators pushed or pulled by a single person are used as garden tools for small-scale gardening, such as for the household's own use or for small market gardens . Similarly sized rotary tillers combine the functions of a harrow and cultivator into one multipurpose machine. Cultivators are usually either self-propelled or drawn as an attachment behind either

7644-640: The three-shared plow, the plow-and-sow implement, and the harrow were developed subsequently. By the end of the Song dynasty in 1279, Chinese ploughs had reached a state of development that would not be seen in Holland until the 17th century. The Romans achieved a heavy-wheeled mould-board plough in the late 3rd and 4th century AD, for which archaeological evidence appears, for instance, in Roman Britain . The Greek and Roman mould-boards were usually tied to

7735-423: The time needed to prepare a field and so allowed a farmer to work a larger area of land. In addition, the resulting pattern of low (under the mould board) and high (beside it) ridges in the soil forms water channels, allowing the soil to drain. In areas where snow build-up causes difficulties, this lets farmers plant the soil earlier, as the meltwater run-off drains away more quickly. There are five major parts of

7826-454: The tractor by a drawbar or mounted on the three-point hitch . A modern development of the traditional harrow is the rotary power harrow, often just called a power harrow. In modern mechanized farming, generally a farmer will use two harrows, one after the other. The disk harrow is used first to slice up the large clods left by the mould-board plough, followed by the spring-tooth harrow. To save time and fuel they may be pulled by one tractor;

7917-591: The wheeled heavy plough, common in Roman north-western Europe by the 5th century AD. Many view plough as a derivative of the verb * plehan ~ * plegan 'to take responsibility' (cf. German pflegen 'to look after, nurse'), which would explain, for example, Old High German pfluog with its double meaning of 'plough' and 'livelihood'. Guus Kroonen (2013) proposes a vṛddhi -derivative of * plag/kkōn 'sod' (cf. Dutch plag 'sod', Old Norse plagg 'cloth', Middle High German pflacke 'rag, patch, stain'). Finally, Vladimir Orel (2003) tentatively attaches plough to

8008-402: Was also discovered at Kalibangan , India. A terracotta model of the early ards was found at Banawali , India, giving insight into the form of the tool used. The ard remained easy to replace if it became damaged and easy to replicate. The earliest was the bow ard, which consists of a draft-pole (or beam) pierced by a thinner vertical pointed stick called the head (or body), with one end being

8099-572: Was first widely commercialized in the 1950s and 1960s, it played into that era's optimistic worldview in which sciences such as chemistry would usher in a new age of modernity that would leave old-fashioned practices (such as weed control via cultivators) in the dustbin of history. Thus, herbicidal weed control was adopted very widely, and in some cases too heavily and hastily. In subsequent decades, people overcame this initial imbalance and came to realize that herbicidal weed control has limitations and externalities , and it must be managed intelligently. It

8190-496: Was practised. Hoe-farming is the traditional tillage method in tropical or sub-tropical regions, which are marked by stony soils, steep slope gradients, predominant root crops, and coarse grains grown at wide intervals. While hoe-agriculture is best suited to these regions, it is used in some fashion everywhere. Some ancient hoes, like the Egyptian mr , were pointed and strong enough to clear rocky soil and make seed drills , which

8281-399: Was used up until the 1960s in poorer land. It suited the moist Irish climate, as the trenches formed by turning in the sods provided drainage. It allowed potatoes to be grown in bogs (peat swamps) and on otherwise unfarmed mountain slopes. In the basic mould-board plough, the depth of cut is adjusted by lifting against the runner in the furrow, which limited the weight of the plough to what

#573426