Tillage Implements and Implements for Seed Bed Preparations

March 9, 2023 Agric4Profits

Tillage implements includes but not limited to the following;

Ploughing implements: Plowing buries green or dried material, loosens the soil so that other implements can operate, removes or delays competition with weeds and roughens the soil surface so as to check runoff of rainfall.

The mold board plow: Breaks loose or shears off furrows slice by forcing a triple wedge through the soil. This action inverts the soil and breaks it into lumps. Some soil pulverization takes place.

The disk plows: These are important for use in loose soil but also in those soils too dry and hard for easy penetration of moldboard plows. The disks vary in size from 50 to 75 cm while the depth of plowing may be varied from 10 to 25 cm.

Tillage Implements for seed bed preparations

Tillage to prepare a seed bed after the land has been plowed is accomplished with harrows, field cultivators or other machines equipped with disks, shovels, teeth, spikes, sweeps, knives, etc.

1. Harrows

Harrows smoothen and pulverize plowed soil compact it and destroy weeds. The disk harrow cuts, moves, and pulverizes the soil and destroys weeds.

2. The handhoe

This is still the most common tillage implement among small scale farmers. The spike-tooth harrows breaks soil clods, levels the land, and kills small weeds.

3. Field cultivator

This implement makes the soil surface rough and cloddy, creating a condition necessary to check wind erosion.

Implement for inter-tillage

Ordinary cultivator: Shovel or sweep cultivators are the types most frequently used for intertillage.

Rotary hoe: This consists of a series of 18-inch (45 cm) hoe wheels each of which is fitted with teeth shaped like fingers. As the wheels rotate these teeth penetrate and stir the soil.

This hoe is useful for uprooting small weeds by blind cultivation before the crop grows up as well as early cultivation of young corn and other row crops.

The ordinary spike-tooth harrow: This is used with little injury to the corn, to kill small weeds in corn when the corn plants are still small.

The lister cultivator: This is sometimes equipped with disks or knives, or both and sometimes with disk and shovels.

For the first cultivation, the disks are set to cut the weeds on the sides of the furrow, the soil being thrown away from the crop row. The shovels may be set to stir the soil near the plants.