Both industrial large-scale and private, and even amateur farming is not complete without loosening the soil. On a flower bed with tulips or a dill bed with an area of a couple of square meters, a manual chopper will successfully perform this operation. A plot of ten acres (a hundredth of a hectare is a plot of land of one hundredth of a hectare with an area of 10 x 10=100 m 2), sown, for example, with potatoes, will most likely require more powerful agricultural machines. And for loosening the soil, you need a harrow. Tooth or disc, home-made or factory-made, aggregated by a walk-behind tractor, horse traction or even human. The most common and simple type of harrows are tooth harrows.
It is not difficult to make such an agricultural tool with your own hands. It is important not to make a mistake with the size and weight, so that the harrow, instead of contributing to the crop, does not “bury” it. So, more about everything.
Types of surface tillage. Non-reversal processing
There are few ways (types) of mechanical tillage. In different sources, they can be classified differently and differ in names. So, processing implies, in addition to compaction (rolling, slamming,pressing), three types of loosening:
- loosening the soil with the turnover of the layer;
- loosening without reservoir turnover;
- loosening with alignment.
If we are talking about preparing the soil for the winter in central Russia, then this is most often loosening with a layer turnover, or plowing. Various types of plow shares provide different results. So, a plow with a cylindrical surface of the plowshare wraps the layer partially, but breaks it along the entire length, providing good loosening along the way. But the screw share turns the layer exactly 180 °, keeping it almost unchanged and well planting weed seeds to a depth (where a significant part of them die due to removal from light and heat).
Some types of harrows also partially wrap the bed, such as a disc harrow. Its tooth “relative” refers to agricultural implements that carry out loosening with leveling.
Harrow targets
What is harrowing used for? After all, there is plowing, cultivation. These agricultural practices loosen the subsoil layer, contribute to the air supply of the root systems of crops. And what can, in comparison with a plow or a chisel, a tooth harrow? Light processing of the surface itself, nothing more. But this kind of impact on the field is sometimes in demand.
A simple example. The field was plowed on loam, there was no rain for a week, but on the contrary, the sun heats the giant clods of earth formed during plowing, and the warm breeze drives the remaining moisture out of them. What happens if such areasjust put the seeders in? Anything but sowing grain. Harvest with such farming is not worth waiting for.
If the land is located on complex heavy lands, after plowing, the tooth harrow will work successfully. Heavy metal-teeth bristling construction will break heavy clods.
And already a flat surface, now consisting of lumps no larger than a few centimeters in size, will not dry out ahead of time and will be ready to give life to a new crop.
Classification of tooth harrows
Conditionally tooth harrow can be divided into three classes:
- heavy (one tooth of such an agricultural tool presses on the ground with a force of about 2-3 kg);
- medium (tooth pressure from 1 to 2 kg);
- light (no more than one kilogram - the pressure of the tooth of this harrow).
Recently, the classification is rapidly changing due to the increasing use of aggregates for complex tillage. Such a machine wraps the layer in one pass, destroys it to lumps of a given size, levels the surface, and, if necessary, compacts it and even applies mineral fertilizers.
Using various types of harrows
The most difficult soils from the point of view of agricultural technology are clays and loams. A heavy tooth harrow is used to break up clods after plowing (reverse plowing) or chiseling. The hitch of such implements is aggregated, as a rule, with tractors from the 2nd class and above.
Earlier, the use of such couplings was a whole undertaking. The hitch itself and the harrows included in it were delivered to the place of work in a trailer. It took several people to assemble all the links of agricultural implements together. Modern hydraulic tooth harrows are easily serviced by one machine operator. Right on the field, the harrow from the transport position, thanks to the presence of hydraulic drives, is transferred to the working position at the touch of a button.
Medium harrows work on light soils - sandstone and sandy loam. But the use of light harrows is associated not with the type of soil, but with technology. With their help, “moisture closure” is most often performed - breaking the crust that forms after precipitation. This is done in order to destroy the tubules through which moisture was absorbed into the ground - to save water for plants.
Weeds are also controlled with light harrows. Weeds that have just sprouted from the seed fall to the surface along with the roots and die from dehydration.
Do-it-yourself harrow
The design of the tooth harrow is simple. The simplest agricultural tool for loosening and leveling the soil layer is made like a regular wooden grate. The distance between adjacent teeth, if we talk about small personal plots, can be planned in the range from 100 to 200 mm.
The teeth can be inserted into the grid nodes in different ways:
- The easiest way is to drive nails of sufficient thickness withbiting off hats afterwards. Not the best solution in terms of reliability, suitable for light harrowing (weed control until the cultivated crop has emerged, moisture closure).
- Instead of nails, you can use thick self-tapping screws, and the unthreaded part remains outside, like a working area.
- Pieces of reinforcement 8-12 mm, driven with a guaranteed tightness into pre-prepared holes.
Better and more reliable will be a metal harrow. As bars, you can use any available rolled products: angle, channel, pipes, etc. Just do not weld the teeth (pieces of steel reinforcement are most often used as them) directly to the surface of the harrow. Such a tooth is likely to break off quickly. Holes are pre-drilled in the rails, prepared rods are inserted and their exit points are scalded on both sides.
For areas with difficult terrain
You can make a tooth harrow with your own hands with a slightly more complex design. It will work perfectly as a light harrow for breaking capillary crust, as well as for killing weeds. A feature of its design is the articulation of elements.
Such a tool will perfectly cope with weeding thanks to its segmental structure - not a single depression or bulge of the sown area will be left without the "attention" of its teeth.
Toothed power harrow
Appeared in domestic crop production relatively recently. It is most often used in the cultivation of potatoes. After the passage of such a harrow, the farmer receives a regular bed of trapezoidal section. The harrow perfectly weeds out the weeds, remarkably loosens the soil. What is important, it can be used until the very flowering of potatoes - the teeth of the rotors practically do not damage the stems of plants.
Another plus. Potatoes after the passage of the rotor are in the beds on a hill relative to the general level of the field. Due to this, since the ridges warm up better, earlier and more friendly crop shoots are provided.
