Cultivation machinery

Seedbed preparation is the most important farm operation. Many kinds of farm implements are used to break, turn, pulverize, loosen, and aerate the soil and prepare it for drilling and planting crops.

Primary tillage equipment includes various types of plows. Deciding which of them to use, depends on climate and soil conditions. One can use mould board plows, disk plows or subsoil plows.

Secondary tillage equipment includes harrows, rollers and cultivators.

Mould board plows may be of different types according to the kind and number of mould boards, type of soil and the tractor size. There are conventional plows with right-handed¹ mould boards and reversible plows having both left- and right-handed mould boards.

Disk plows are the best ones for cutting virgin², dry, and root lands. Subsoil plows are employed to loosen the soil in the bottom of the furrow made by the ordinary plow.

After the soil has been plowed, different types of harrows are used. They finish the seedbed, cover the moisture, destroy weeds, aerate the soil, break the clods, etc. There are harrows with zigzag frame and rigid of flexible spring tines. The tines may be of reciprocating or rotating types. On disk harrows 2 or more sets of disks are fitted on a frame. They cut stubble or trash, and harrow hard and sod soils. Light harrows are mounted on small tractors and are used for covering seeds after drilling. Medium³ harrows are also mounted or semi-mounted. They mix fertilizers with soil, cultivate autumn-sown⁴ corn, etc. Heavy rotary harrows make good seedbeds in spring after the soil has been frosted. Drag harrows both loosen and level the soil. They are driven from the PTO-shaft and depth control is provided by the hydraulic system.

Various kinds of rollers are used to compact the soil before and after drilling, to loosen the upper⁵ level and to firm the surface level of soil, to break clods and to smooth the soil.

Cultivators are used for stubble cleaning and breaking, seedbed preparation usually for root-crops, cutting weeds, interrow cultivation⁶, for land reclamation work, etc. Cultivators may be mounted or trailed. Rotary cultivators have a PTO-shaft to perform different jobs.

Cultivators have removable working parts. They have tines to loosen the soil and to destroy weeds, shares to loosen the soil more deeply, blades to apply fertilizers, and bodies to earth up crops.

All cultivation machinery needs regular maintenance in order to ensure⁷ long working life.

NOTES

¹right-handed - правосторонний

²virgin - целинный

³medium - средний

⁴autumn-sown - посеянный осенью

⁵upper - верхний

⁶interrow cultivation - обработка междурядьев

⁷ensure – гарантировать