When working with soil management, plowing is one of the absolute most important practices. Plowing has been used for countless centuries with the goal of creating a structural, grained, straight and moist sowing layer of soil. Plowing is in its essence simple, but it is nonetheless a very effective practice at farms, that inverts and cuts the soil, while also creating ridges and furrows.
Modern Plow Machinery
Over the many centuries that plowing machinery has existed it has naturally experienced many significant improvements. Today, plowing machinery is complex and is constantly being innovated on. The plowing tools of today’s world can facilitate alle steps of crop production from soil management to harvesting.
There are several different kinds of plows:
- Moldboard plow: wing-shaped plow that inverts and slices the layer of soil.
- Disc plow: large steel disks that turns over the soil, cuts it and breaks furrow slices.
- Ridge plow: double wings that creates ridges for a particular type of crops
- Switch plow: Rectangular shaped plow body that is used for plowing medium and light soils
- Chisel plow: used for deep tillage for aerating and loosening the soil but does not turn or invert the soil.
- Sub-soil plow: Breaks up compact layers of soil without turning it over and plows to deep depths.
