The plough (American spelling: plow ; both pronounced /ˈplaʊ/ ) is a tool used in farming for initial cultivation of soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting. It has been a basic instrument for most of recorded history, and represents one of the major advances in agriculture. The primary purpose of ploughing is to turn over the upper layer of the soil, bringing fresh nutrients to the surface, while burying weeds and the remains of previous crops, allowing them to break down. It also aerates the soil, and allows it to hold moisture better. In modern use, a ploughed field is typically left to dry out, and is then harrowed before planting.
Ploughs were initially pulled by oxen, and later in many areas by horses. In industrialised countries, the first mechanical means of pulling a plough used steam-power (ploughing engines or steam tractors), but these were gradually superseded by internal-combustion-powered tractors. In the past two decades plough use has reduced in some areas (where soil damage and erosion are problems), in favour of shallower ploughing and other less invasive tillage techniques.
Ploughs are even used under the sea, for the laying of cables, as well as preparing the earth for side-scan sonar in a process used in oil exploration.
Etymology
In English, as in other Germanic languages, the plough was traditionally known by other names, e.g. Old English sulh , Old High German medela , geiza , or huohili , and Old Norse arðr , all presumably referring to the scratch plough.
The current word plough also comes from Germanic, but it appears relatively late (it is absent from Gothic), and is thought to be a loanword from one of the north Italic languages. In these it had different meanings: in Raetic plaumorati (Pliny), and in Latin plaustrum "wagon, cart", plōstrum, plōstellum "cart", and plōxenum, plōximum "cart box".
The word is first attested in Germanic as Lombardic plōvum , referring to the wheeled heavy plough. From Germanic, the term was borrowed into Balto-Slavic languages giving Old Church Slavonic plugǔ and Lithuanian plúgas . Ultimately, the word is thought to derive from an ancestral PIE * blōkó , related to Armenian pelem "to dig" and Welsh bwlch "gap, notch".
History of the plough
Hoeing
Main article: Hoe-farmingWhen agriculture was first developed, simple hand-held digging sticks or hoes would have been used in highly fertile areas, such as the banks of the Nile where the annual flood rejuvenates the soil, to create furrows wherein seeds could be sown. In order to regularly grow crops in less fertile areas, the soil must be turned to bring nutrients to the surface.
Scratch plough
Main article: Ard (plough)The domestication of oxen in Mesopotamia and by its contemporary Indus valley civilization, perhaps as early as the 6th millennium BCE, provided mankind with the pulling power necessary to develop the plough. The very earliest plough was the simple scratch-plough , or ard , which consists of a frame holding a vertical wooden stick that was dragged through the topsoil (still used in many parts of the world). It breaks up a strip of land directly along the ploughed path, which can then be planted. Because this form of plough leaves a strip of undisturbed earth between the rows, fields are often cross-ploughed at right angles, and this tends to lead to squarish fields In the archeology of northern Europe, such squarish fields are referred to as "Celtic fields".
Crooked ploughs
Main article: AratrumThe Greeks apparently introduced the next major advance in plough design; the crooked plough, which angled the cutting surface forward, leading to the name. The cutting surface was often faced with bronze or (later) iron. Metal was expensive, so in times of war it was melted down or forged to make weapons – or the reverse in more peaceful times. This is presumably the origin of the expression found in the Bible "beat your swords to ploughshares".
Mouldboard plough
A major advance in plough design was the mouldboard plough (American spelling: moldboard plow ), which aided the cutting blade. The coulter , knife or skeith cuts vertically into the ground just ahead of the share (or frog ) a wedge-shaped surface to the front and bottom of the mouldboard with the landside of the frame supporting the below-ground components. The upper parts of the frame carries (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, there is a wheel or wheels positioned to support the frame. In the case of a single-furrow plough there is only one wheel at the front and handles at the rear for the ploughman to steer and manoeuvre 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 that is then lifted by the share and carried by the mouldboard up and over, so that the strip of sod (slice of the topsoil) that is being cut lifts and rolls over as the plough moves forward, dropping back to the ground 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 that has been lifted from it rests at about a 45 degree angle in the next-door furrow and lies up the back of the sod from the previous run.
In this way, a series of ploughing runs down a field (paddock) leaves a row of sods that lie partly in the furrows and partly on the ground lifted earlier. Visually, across the rows, there is the land (unploughed part) 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 the classic furrow.
The mouldboard plough greatly reduced the amount of time needed to prepare a field, and as a consequence, allowed a farmer to work a larger area of land. In addition, the resulting pattern of low (under the mouldboard) and high (beside it) ridges in the soil forms water channels, allowing the soil to drain. In areas where snow buildup is an issue, this allows the soil to be planted earlier as the snow runoff is drained away more quickly.
Parts of a mouldboard plough: There are 5 major parts of a mouldboard plough
- Mouldboard
- Share
- Landside
- Frog
- Tailpiece
A runner extending from behind the share to 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 mouldboard. Because of this runner, the mouldboard plough is harder to turn around than the scratch plough, and its introduction brought about a change in 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. Introduced by the Celts in Britain around 400 BC (without the replaceable feature), early mouldboards were basically wedges that sat inside the cut formed by the coulter, turning over the soil to the side. The ploughshare spread the cut horizontally below the surface, so when the mouldboard lifted it, a wider area of soi
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